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FREE TIMES: JANUARY 9, 2006

ANYONE WHO BELIEVES that Clevelanders don’t buy art need only stop by the newly opened Convivium33 Gallery to discover that this is clearly not the case. On the walls of the gorgeously renovated space are paintings by Thomas Frontini, many of which have red dots next to them indicating that they have been sold. As of last weekend, approximately $31,500 worth of art was purchased (and this doesn’t count the couple who, on the morning after the opening reception, were seriously eyeing — unflinchingly, I might add — a painting with an $7,200 price tag).

If the sales are impressive, they are only dwarfed by the gallery itself, which occupies a building that was once Saint Josaphat Roman Catholic Church, built in 1915. Alenca Banco bought the church and its adjacent rectory and convent buildings in May 2001 and, with the help of artists such as Terri Tufts, Clay Parker and PJ Doran, has been renovating the property since. “Clay [Parker] and Terri [Tufts] repainted the ceiling,” explains Banco, “and PJ [Doran] redid the floors; while watching the ceiling being transformed felt like I was witnessing Michelangelo at work.” Convivium33 is a curator’s dream gallery space; light from the huge windows along the walls of the former church streams elegantly into the gallery. The ceilings are immense, and the wood floors are spare but gorgeous. Artwork can be hung on the altar, which is still intact. Banco may have chosen the perfect artist for the inaugural show in the magnificent space, as Frontini’s paintings are classically inspired, and many of them are large in scale.

Frontini’s style and imagery are appropriated from the Western painting traditions of Italian Mannerism and Northern and Southern Renaissance, with ironic, and at times humorous, contemporary twists. The artist also makes use of the allegorical painting tradition; his works are peppered with iconography of the 21st century. Everything She Needs (Northern Michigan Beach Scene) depicts a beautiful blonde girl in an ultra-feminine white and pink dress. She holds a delicate leash, which is attached to an enormous fluffy pink poodle. The pair stands on a beach, amidst sparse foliage, and two delicate birds circle the girl’s head

The sumptuousness of the extraordinarily beautiful child and her dog is underscored by the artist’s painting technique, as his brushwork seemingly transforms oil paint into satin, even velvet. However, as is frequently the case with Frontini’s paintings, all is not as it seems; behind the girl and her dog, a sea monster with a sail on its back floats eerily in the water. Frontini’s iconic fluffy dog reappears in She Belongs To Me, as a longhaired white canine fills a pink picture plane. To the dog’s left is a diminutive human form. Here the artist humorously addresses the idea that in this culture, pets are so pampered, so “humanized,” that they often lead humans, who are their possessions, rather than the reverse. However, what underlies both of these works, along with many of Frontini’s paintings, is a critique of the extravagance and excess of consumer culture.

His focus on conspicuous consumption is epitomized in Luxury Goods, a painting that depicts an attractive, white brunette woman, who poses with a massive, albeit docile grayish-white workhorse. The woman is a more mature version of the young girl in Everything She Needs. She is also more sophisticated, carrying a smart red bag in her left hand and donning a fashionable brown beret and a delicate tan dress. Behind her and the horse is a beach scene, which includes a muscle-flexing man and a sunbathing woman. Offshore, but still in the distance, another hulking horse pulls an equally colossal red Hummer. The automobile is immediately linked to status and excess, yet the artist humorously undermines this by rendering the high-performance “utility vehicle” powerless. Here, the ultimate SUV is nothing more than a superfluous horse-drawn carriage. The woman in Luxury Goods is, like all of Frontini’s human figures, luxurious; she has a glowing, otherworldly quality. Like her horse, the Hummer behind her, and her glamorous handbag, she is a commodity ready to be consumed. In this context, and in the real world, beauty and glamour can be bought at exclusive department stores, salons, and at the offices of cosmetic surgeons.

Ancestral Garden depicts an androgynous couple with two brunette boys and a blonde girl. The group’s ever-loyal terrier stands at their feet, and one of the adults holds a snake, which is wrapped elegantly around the figure’s wrist. The five people and their serpent friend frame a painting of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The pink poodle is again referenced, only this time the dog is made of pink balloons, which float at the end of a string about the figures. The entire scene takes place amidst lush foliage, near a lake or seashore. On top of the painting of the precarious signifier of antiquity sits a tiny white granite structure with a miniature American flag flying above it. The flag nearly touches the snake, which symbolically references seduction, sin or iniquity. Frontini cleverly references the sinister yet fragile nature of power, also pointing to, as he says in his artist statement, “the consistent repetition of human behavior across history into the present day.”

New Work by Thomas Frontini is an achievement for the artist and for gallery owner Alenca Banco. The only drawback to Convivium33’s inaugural exhibition is that it may be difficult to match, let alone surpass.