Recycling Beauty: Michael Kareken’s “Urban Forest” at the Groveland Gallery

Michael Kareken classifies his paintings of the Rock-Tenn recycling plant as landscapes in a contemporary context, his subtle uses of light and shade adding to the dramatic and surprisingly beautiful scenery of urban Saint Paul’s garbage. The Rock-Tenn plant is located in Saint Paul’s Midway District, near Kareken’s painting studio. The American Iron Metal Scrap Yard, another urban landscape he features in the exhibition, is located in Northeast Minneapolis.

The exhibition, entitled “Urban Forest,” runs through January 19th at the Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis. It includes twenty four paintings inspired by the Rock-Tenn plant and American Iron yard, which represent a stylistic development for Kareken. A talented figurative painter, drawer, and print maker, Kareken has specialized for the past twenty years in painting interiors and portraits, mostly of his family. He is currently working at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) teaching painting and drawing. MCAD had a show in 2006 on environment and sustainability, in which Kareken was invited to participate. Looking at the heaps of cardboard and paper next door, Kareken recognized similarities to the mountains he grew up seeing in his home state of Washington. Drawing from the painting techniques other artists have used to convey the stoniness, massiveness and movement of mountains, Kareken communicates the grandeur and fluidity of the massive paper mountains next door. The exhibition’s title comes from what the plant workers call the Rock-Tenn plant’s never-disappearing piles of paper, “urban forests.”

The twenty four oil paintings included in the exhibition, while displaying subject matter limited by the confines of the recycling plant and iron scrap yard, show variety in composition, color, and use of light. In three small paintings, the industrial magnets used to move metal scrap fill a blue grey sky with the iron red of falling rusted metal. Using soft strokes in the center of the composition, Kareken represents the pieces of metal falling through the air, as a photograph would appear blurred by the objects’ movement. The chain from which the magnet hangs is shown mid-swing, capturing the rhythm of the magnet’s movement. A visible appreciation for machinery gives the painting an almost childlike sense of wonder.

In addition to oil-on-canvas paintings, the exhibition includes several large oil-on-panel panoramas, measuring as long as six feet. River View, American Iron Metal Scrap Yard depicts in one-point perspective a gravel road bordered by two mountainous piles of metal scrap. Between them, the road leads off toward the Mississippi River, the homes on the river made hazily visible in the distance by the artist’s use of aerial perspective. The cast shadow of the scrap mountain closest to the viewer, on the right side of the picture plane, indicates the sun’s position and gives a feeling of the sun setting over the river. The color choice in this composition, with variations of blue and gray tones throughout, emits a coolness which is offset by the dustiness of the dirt road and the orange highlights of rusted iron interspersed through the piles of scrap. The color palette the artist uses in all the paintings included in the exhibition add a visual cohesiveness beyond subject matter. The matte effect of browns and grays, softened against each other rather than having any sharp contrast, are highlighted by small, bright flecks of pink, white, and gold only noticeable with close, intimate observation.

The composition using the most warmth in its color palette, Copper Bin, uses one point perspective to depict an area cordoned off by two steel walls placed at an angle to each other and filled with copper. The wires, plate, and random scrap collected here give off a dull glow, cooled off by the surrounding blues and grays. In the background, behind the cordoning walls, two openings emit a bright light from behind the space occupied by the copper scraps. The brush strokes, intentionally impressionistic and lacking overly refined detail, reflect the anonymous nature of the subject matter. Each piece of garbage and each piece of scrap add to the composition, but is not in itself conceptually essential.

By limiting media to oil paints on canvas and panel, subject matter to the Rock-Tenn recycling plant and the American Iron Metal Scrap Yard, and his color palette to complementary blues and oranges, artist Michael Kareken has created a cohesive, thoughtful, and engaging exhibition. The environmentalist undertone of the show makes this show at the Groveland a worthwhile diversion for the modern, green-minded audience. Realistically executed, with a sense of soft light emanating from the picture planes, Kareken’s images are accessible and inspiring to viewers-regardless of their previous opinions of garbage. The show has a quietly implicit message about American land use and changing urban landscapes, relying on audience thoughtfulness and attention more than projection of the artist’s attitude. Seeing the paintings hanging together at the Groveland is an informative experience for the audience. Both the artist’s opinion of the recycling plants, with their vast mountains of refuse and the constant shifting of material, and the artist’s environmentalist message, provide a quiet and timely recognition of how urban landscapes are changing, for better or worse.