Jackie Felix (1929-2009 )

The Tabletops Series (1990) show tables in ridiculously exaggerated perspective only possible in a world where visual laws are suspended. In a surrealist rush to the horizon, each table diminishes at frantic speed into the interior of a room. On the table is a preposterous object, such as Goya's Chicken (a pun on the Spanish artist and Goya Foods) or Potato Head Lamp, in which the table legs are suspiciously human and wear woman's red high heels. The light in these picctures casts weird, illogical shadows and the barren spaces painted in forlorn, streaky strokes point up the lack of human presence. The comedy soon fades and the odd scenes become freighted with the near-funerary gloom. -Richard Huntigton