Monday, December 24, 2007 - Marion Meyer Contemporary Art

Monday, December 24, 2007
ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
John Szabo is December's guest artist at The Cove
Gallery in Laguna Beach
By ROBERTA CARASSO
LAGUNA BEACH - John Szabo is this month's guest artist at the
Cove Gallery. By having periodic guest artists, The Cove, an artist
cooperative, introduces new art to its already varied exhibition
schedule.
Szabo is a multifaceted person. He is a writer, filmmaker and painter.
All his talents feed into his paintings; and it can also be said that his
paintings feed into his other art forms. His work, no matter what the
medium is inventive and thoughtful, displaying a great deal of care in

details and in overall concept. One of the series he exhibits, although
clearly a painting, is much like minimal relief sculpture.
Szabo likes to begin with three rectangles, (he is obsessive about
three rectangles), in the vein of Mark Rothko who is famous for his
stacked rectangles. The artist builds the surface of the canvas with
layers of paint meticulously drawing and carving out (some times with
a knife or razor blade) horizontal and vertical lines. At some point, he
sands the surface, removing paint; then adds more paint and sands
again. This repetitive process gives the art an ethereal look as if the
image is seen through a veil, the results of subtracting and adding.
Szabo then begins another arduous, even dangerous process,
applying a clear polymer to make the surface transparent, hard and
shiny. Using goggles and protecting himself as much as possible, he
mixes resin and a hardener and the final step takes place. In the
process much force is applied as Szabo uses many industrial tools to
maneuver through the surface and remove paint. He uses a sander
and other tools purchased at hardware stores. The resulting delicate
imagery is actually painted on Masonite as they need to withstand the
mauling he gives them while creating.
Another series is also about repetitive, but here Szabo prints small
rectangles on the surface with a wooden block, frenetically dipping
the block into paint and covering the entire surface in a pattern effect.
In some work, he uses circles that repeat through out the surface. In
the first series, he worked sculpturally, building a very narrow threedimensional
surface. In the second series, he works like a printer,
stamping repetitive forms and adding colorful paint to achieve a
continuity of color, composition, and texture. In these inventive
processes, Szabo does not use brushes. He also invents his
implements as he uses plastic and metal tools to maneuver paint and
tape to define borders.
Szabo says "all art comes from the same place from your soul." He
began in the creative arts very early, writing poetry and then fiction.
Later he worked as a newspaper reporter and made films. As a child,

his father had a film and film editing station that gave Szabo his first
experiences with making home movies. Even today, he makes film.
His film about artists with disabilities was shown on PBS and received
many responses from disable viewers, even from those who were not
artists.
Szabo grew up in Orange County, and a few years ago, came back to
focus on his painting. He recently showed his work at the Orange
County Contemporary Art Center and the Townley Gallery. Two
pieces are on display at Laguna Beach's Sapphire Restaurant.