‘Altered States’ explores colorful, other-worldly landscapes in abstract

The phrase "altered states" can mean a lot of things, but it definitely conjures a certain image: psychedelia, bright, shiny colors, even landscapes reminiscent of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." It has the feel of something illicit and exploratory, vibrant and abstract, making it a very fitting title for the exhibit currently showing in the Julio Fine Arts Gallery.

The first installation of the spring semester, "Altered States," showcases the work of two Baltimore artists, Carolyn Case and Paul Jeanes.

Both Case and Jeanes create intricately detailed, labor-intensive abstract paintings of rich, layered color. Case's paintings are created using different colors of paint in crisscross patterns and multicolored drips of paint sanded into the piece. Jeanes also uses multiple layers of color, up to 25, which are painted and then taken off with the residual color scraped into the canvas.

Each artist also draws on international inspiration. The landscapes and traditional artistic styles of Japan, Iran and India inform Case's work. In the art of these countries, she saw "a timeless paradise," she said. The most recent paintings by Jeanes recall a drive across Iceland. The two newest additions to his series Visions of Excess,numbers 34 and 35, are subtitled "Jökulsárlón," which is the name of a glacier lake in Iceland.

Though the works of both artists have many similarities in technique and general genre, their pieces are nonetheless distinct in specific content and impression.

Case's work, while abstract, almost demands an attempt to make sense of it. Shapes seem to want to come together in some kind of orderly fashion. Night-timing and Nightlite could both be alien landscapes under a starry sky. Red Drugseems to form a sort of vessel of negative space.

All of Case's pieces have this sense of abstracting or distorting the everyday, raising it to some level of "other-worldliness." With regards to the final product, Case sees her work as though it is "an aftermath, or perhaps echo, of an unspecified religious event," and the pieces do contain this sense of a strange ceremony after the fact.

Though united in technique and general feel, Case's paintings also stand on their own, creating no particular story but offering many windows into an exceptional, psychedelic world.

Jeanes' work, on the other hand, is deeply unified. Each painting is part of his Visions of Excessseries, distinguished in most cases only by a number. This connection gives a strong sense of flow in his contribution. Though the pieces are presented mostly out of order, there is no loss of logic. The paintings differ in color scheme and specific composition, but they all feel as though they are aspects of something larger.

What that something is, however, is much more difficult to determine. Unlike Case's work, Jeanes' paintings do not truly recall any physical shapes or objects. They are purely abstract, resembling only patterns one might find in the real world. On the other hand, Visions of Excess 30-35do seem to resemble the arctic environment that inspired them with bright white shapes against a background of deep, cold blue that makes reference to glacier lakes like Jökulsárlón.

While it does not lend itself to direct physical associations the way that Case's work does, Jeanes' paintings also have a feeling of a fantastic other world. In his art, he said he tries to "depict a kind of turbulent, chromatic atmosphere where shifting fragments and gestures are at once illuminated and obscured." Where Case's work gives the viewer visions of many imagined realities, Jeanes gives many perspectives of one elusive dimension.

Despite not having been created collaboratively, the artworks of Carolyn Case and Paul Jeanes work together, almost as two sides of the same coin. All of the art offers a sort of dreamlike quality, a sense of unreality and change, and a feeling that the world has indeed been altered. Ultimately, the title of the show seems to indicate that sense of change far more than any kind of intoxication. The world presented has decidedly been altered, but it has not been drugged; it has been rendered yet more lively and awake.

Altered States runs from Jan. 23 to Feb. 26 in the Julio Fine Arts Gallery, with an opening reception and artist's talk on Jan. 26 from 5-7 p.m.