Abstract art exhibit at Gibbes homecoming for Rutenberg

Arguably, the reputation of abstract art as arcane and indecipherable is ill-deserved. In many ways, it embodies a greater clarity and opportunity than the representational.

"For me, abstraction is not a style but a process," says painter Brian Rutenberg, 44, a graduate of the College of Charleston who lives in New York. "To abstract means to remove. I have always believed that an eye not told what to see sees more."

Those visiting the Gibbes Museum of Art will have a chance to peer beyond the obvious beginning Friday when the exhibition "Brian Rutenberg: Tidesong" opens its three-month run in the Main Gallery.

On view through Jan. 10 and organized by the Jerald Melberg Gallery in Charlotte, the exhibition features abstract paintings inspired by the landscapes of the South Carolina native's youth.

The exhibition will be preceded at 6 p.m. Wednesday by an appearance by the artist, who will discuss his work and sign copies of the large-format book "Brian Rutenberg." The event is free for Gibbes members and $10 for nonmembers.

"My imagination was in large part formed by my childhood experience growing up in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, from Myrtle Beach down to Charleston," says Rutenberg, who earned his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. "To this day, I still use that sense of light and that geography as kind of a springboard, as a starting point for the work even though the work does not end up being about the Lowcountry or anything down there.

"There's a certain kind of light there when you're around a lot of water. ... It can be melancholic. It can be joyful. It can be many, many different facets, and I try to get that feeling of light."

Since 1985, Rutenberg has enjoyed more than 100 gallery and museum exhibitions across the United States, including a 2006 retrospective at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia. Rutenberg's work is an alchemy of vivid color and expressive brushwork, with influences ranging from the music of Glenn Gould and Celtic culture to the art of painters Joan Mitchell and Hans Hoffman.

Today, most of his paintings draw their titles from the poems of Archibald Rutledge, South Carolina's first poet laureate. In 1985 at 19, the College of Charleston fine arts major showed his first painting in public -- at the Gibbes -- and now has come full circle.

"I remember the night of that opening, how fine it felt to exhibit there, and I secretly hoped that I might have the honor of a solo show in that museum one day," he recalls. "I am as thrilled now as I was then. This feels like a homecoming of sorts. This exhibition was 24 years in the making."

The core of his work, says Rutenberg, is the notion of ecstasy.

"Not a euphoric emotion from looking at a painting but that momentary awareness that joins artist and viewer through the sheer transformative power of looking. I am fascinated with the idea of creating something from nothing. I try to create a world in each painting -- each nuance is the result of repeated encounters, the concrete distilled from the transient.

"A painting offers us an opportunity for unhurried reflection in which time itself becomes a tangible source of pleasure. Painting helps us see with greater acuity, quickens our sense of experience, and reminds us of the miraculous."

Reach Bill Thompson at bthompson@postandcourier.com or 937-5707.