With his elderly grandparents as subjects, Jason Bard Yarmosky’s Elder Kinder explores the infantilization of old age and never-forgotten fantasies that stay with us throughout our lives. At first appearing ironic and slightly mocking, the 10 paintings and eight drawings quickly reveal themselves as a sensitive look at when we “learn to unwalk.”
The paintings introduce us to Len and Elaine as they go through a series of wardrobe changes, ranging from a cowboy outfit to pipe-smoking rabbit to Brünnhilde. Lit from above, each painting’s solitary figure is cast in shadows from their face and folds of loose skin. In “Tight End,” Len’s face is obscured by a large football helmet, and without a cane his frail body leans toward us, almost out of the canvas.
“Cheerleader,” by Jason Bard Yarmosky.
At first the pencil on paper drawings appear as studies for larger paintings, but some are dated later. Their delicate quality and deliberate compositions confirm them as standalone works of art. “Len as Superman” embraces the darkness of the material in a brooding portrait of an aged and distracted hero, while “Elaine’s Mugshot” displays Yarmosky’s finesse in its use of light and soft grays.
Whatever the medium, the portraits, all part of Yarmosky’s first solo show with Like the Spice Gallery, find a balance between reverence and vulnerability. Hints of irony—an old man with a toy gun and a 40-oz. of malt liquor? Ha!—are overwhelmed by the honest portrayal of personal subjects and the ravages of age. Yarmosky embraces his grandparents’ withered structures with a carefully poignant brush. The paintings are not mockery, but rather earnest celebrations of the eternal ability to be a child.
>
Through March 7, Like The Spice Gallery, 224 Roebling St., Brooklyn, 718-388-5388.
