A re­view by­Mar­sha PearceF

The ques­tion of judg­ing art's qual­i­ty is a long-stand­ing one, with an­swers rang­ing from a con­cern with tech­ni­cal ex­e­cu­tion to a stance that ac­knowl­edges sub­jec­tive taste–beau­ty is said to be in the eye of the be­hold­er.

If the art is deemed re­pul­sive then, for some, it has failed.

Yet artist Deb­o­rah Foutch gives use­ful in­sight to how art might be as­sessed. "Art that con­nects is suc­cess­ful," she says.

"Some­times the con­nec­tion is beau­ty, some­times it's re­pel­lent and there is a lot of stuff in be­tween these ex­tremes but art that fills the eye, or ears, but leaves you with an 'eh' feel­ing is un­suc­cess­ful."

Hoyte Jr's pieces are not loath­some.

This is an artist with an abil­i­ty to ma­nip­u­late colour, line and space with thrilling ef­fects. It is, rather, an "eh" or lack of feel­ing, a dis­con­nec­tion from the work that per­me­ates. This dis­tance can be traced to an ab­sence of fresh­ness in his re­cent paint­ings. His last so­lo show was four years ago, in South Africa.

His new pre­sen­ta­tion gives much of the same way of see­ing that he of­fered then: the same pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with tiny cir­cu­lar can­vas­es, dense­ly packed with pig­ment-what he refers to as orbs-and the same fix­a­tion with ad­her­ing masks to a sur­face and em­bell­ish­ing them.

This is com­fort­able work for Hoyte Jr.

A note­wor­thy piece in the show is sim­ple at first blush but, if Hoyte Jr's in­tent is to am­pli­fy an aware­ness of an in­ter­nal space, then the quadrip­tych ti­tled From the In­side Look­ing Out, ac­com­plish­es that.

Hoyte Jr sep­a­rates a con­tin­u­ous view of sky and fo­liage in­to four pan­els.

The paint­ing may be read as a look out a win­dow, per­haps from in­side a room.

How­ev­er the longer the view­er en­gages the work, the more it be­comes open to an­oth­er un­der­stand­ing. The view­er be­comes con­scious of this scene of shrubs and clouds from a po­si­tion with­in her­self-from the mind's eye or spir­it's win­dow.

Self be­comes that in­side place-that room-and Hoyte Jr points to a com­mu­nion be­tween an in­te­ri­or world and an out­er, phys­i­cal are­na.

Be­yond this in­ner/out­er in­ter­ac­tion, best achieved in this piece, the works over­all do not live up to the fo­cus and en­er­gy seen in past art by Hoyte Jr.

The ex­hi­bi­tion Think: Look­ing at the Land­scape With­in Land­scapes ran from De­cem­ber 2-24 at B3 Wine & Spir­its, The Nor­mandie Ho­tel, St Ann's.