JORG R. DUBIN

Benchmarks of greatness have long been established by art historical
Masters. For contemporary painters, these standards seem almost
impossible to surpass or even match. The question for today's artists--- who
work in a realist, pre-Modern mode, using varnishes, glazes, layering and
painstaking methods to achieve naturalistic three-dimensional rendering of
form--- is how to translate traditional methods into a 21st century genre?
Jorg R. Dubin has not reached that exalted level, yet his mesmerizing,
existential approach to formal portraiture conveys what a Rembrandt or a
Caravaggio cannot, a contemporary psychological edge. Dressed in today's
relaxed garb, Dubin's portraits communicate a modern persona with its sense
of freedom, individualism, naturalness, and angst.

A master of intimacy and technique, we feel we have entered a personal space
without permission, as people unmask themselves before us and reveal their
private rather than their public self. Central to Dubin's frank and to the
point renderings is his traditional method known as Indirect Painting. The
painter begins with a general mapping out of the canvas in gray tones or
grisaille. With each stage, he builds under and over coats of glazes and
varnishes and layer upon layer of color. Shapes and edges are developed as
the canvas goes from general values to more specific details. But here
tradition stops. Unpretentious backgrounds of rectangular blocks of subdued,
institutional greens, blue greens or blue grays fill an almost empty room
becoming walls and floor. Tight color values establish the
atmosphere---intense, stark, blunt, and chalky---allowing us to hone in on
the uniqueness of each full-figure or head shot portrait. The background
also frames and isolates the portrayed by decreasing the depth and pushing
the figure into the room.

Ordinary people are transformed into riveting and timeless characters. Each
settles in his or her own natural pose--leaning against the wall, slouched
or flopped in a chair, or assuming endless varieties of body positions. With
meticulous virtuosity, yet with loose and free brushstrokes, Dubin captures
the essence of each sitter, in particular, the eyes. Each stares as if
watching us as much as we watch them.

"The Healer," is a local yoga teacher, a warm inviting man whose eyes tell
much about his depth of understanding. Sitting with bent knees cradled in a
chair, the teacher seems to exude an ageless, hypnotic wisdom. "Hyperion
with Tools" is an electrician holding a lighted fluorescent bulb. Named
after an ancient god of light, he is adorned in workman's regalia---denim
shirt with company name on the pocket, tools at his waist, legs astride, and
a biblical gaze that seems to say "Let there be light." As in all Dubin's
characters, we know him, even if we have never met.

Among the most compelling works is a tongue-and-cheek self-portrait of Dubin
himself, "Mr. Pink Sweeps Up." Dressed in a jumpsuit, sporting a slouched
cap, Dubin, a rather sophisticated man, assumes a down-to-earth, everyman
stance, and, on canvas becomes a janitor pushing a broom. Two powerful
headshots stand out, the art critic Rebecca Schoenkopf and the art collector
Igal Silber. Both penetrating gazes observe us with the same insight with
which they scrutinize a work of art.

Typically, Dubin allows his subjects to select a "normal" (standing,
sitting, or lying down) pose, except in the case of  "Shadow of a Man, "
among Dubin's most demanding works. The painting is about vanity and
superficiality, the uniform, manicured, almost look-alike appearance of a
type of Southern California woman. She wears a short black cocktail dress
and spaghetti strapped heels, and rests her head on the edge of a hassock as
her legs brace upward against a wall. In a somewhat upside-down crucifix
posture, her woven blond hair flows downward; the rush of blood flushes her
face and she strains to look upward at something, but not us. Awkwardness,
bordering on grotesque, transforms her primped, powdered, and ideal
appearance into an architectural structure rather than a nurturing human
being. Positioned against gravity, the woman's torso and bosom fall forward
and her valued looks are distorted. Thus, by repositioning the carefully
manicured body, Dubin deflates the façade of pretense.

With enormous painterly skill, sure brushstrokes, compositional and color
tensions, Dubin cuts through to the core, presenting humans as profoundly
tender beings or dark subjects, which seems to achieve the transference of
the traditional into the 21st Century.

Reprinted with permission of ArtScene, (c)2002".

Roberta Carasso, Ph.D. is a graduate of New York University.
An expert in Contempoary Art, she writes for ArtScene, ArtWeek,
Sculpture Magazine, and Ceramic Monthly. She writes a weekly Column, Art
Waves, for the Laguna News Post. Many of her writings are housed in the
Museum of Modern Art Library in New York City.