Glutton for PWNishment

Bad Desktop Wallpaper, originally uploaded by spraynardkreuger.

Carlos Jimenez didn’t get the message that art wasn’t his forte. Maybe he’s ambitious. His storefront on North Avenue in the Wicker Park neighborhood would lead you to think so. Obviously, his aim is high, either way. After all, he uses the “old master’s technique,” as his website asserts.

Still, his grotesquely colorful, abstract paintings have more in common with Microsoft Windows desktop backgrounds and bad ‘80s prog rock album covers than Goya or Rembrandt. That is, unless you are referring to the packaging for the Latin food brand or the toothpaste.

Just about everything about Jimenez’s work is grandiose, over-the-top and otherworldly. His paintings are about themes as universal as the “beautiful representation of earthy essences.” They are bestowed with evocative, visionary titles like Jazz Flowers, Red Genesis, The Voyage and Phoenix. It’s easy to see where Jimenez is taking us – probably somewhere magical in outer space, possibly on a sparkly starship.

Phoenix in particular showcases Jimenez’s predilection toward “dimensions and parallel universes.” The painting might be alternately titled Floating, Crimson Pinball Watches a Sunset on a Vacation in Scottsdale, Arizona in a more honest universe. In the foreground, a luminescent, reflective marble alights what looks like a hazy, orange mountain range. Clearly, perspective is a problem here. Is the pinball rising to meet the rays of the sun? Is it actually emanating these rays?

Attraction, or Bath Beads’ March to the Apocalypse, is another study in the versatility of hovering, red globes. Dozens of glimmering spheres ascend to the upper extreme of the canvas toward a mysterious, golden glowing light. It could be a sea of cough drops. It could be a horde of bouncy balls careening down to a certain death. Mostly, this cartoonish depiction just makes for trite viewing.

Red Horizon is a clear choice to complete Jimenez’s “abstract red shapes moving around and doing things” series. A flowing plateau of cherry and strawberry Twizzlers cascade into a spackled marigold plane and give the painting a strange sense of dynamic motion.

Obviously, there is a demand for multi-tonal, ethereal mentalscapes such as these. How else would Jimenez maintain such an impressive spread? Hospitals, institutional office spaces and spacey, new age art patrons have empty walls with space to fill. There are those among us that need a scenic image of what an Enya, Yanni or Enigma song might look like.

If anything, Jimenez’s treatment of light in his colorful homages to geometry is, after all, visually interesting. He creates a glowing warmth around the cascading spheres, rods and rectangles that punctuate his not-of-this-landscapes. Sunburst Nebula, while dubiously titled, creates the deep, hot appearance of a shining sun or moon or star.

The Jazz Flowers series also contains accessible works, highlighted by fields of dotted floral scenery. Swirling clouds in a blue sky hover above the grass, buds and blossoms. While the image of shards of flora may not be the kind of art that shapes political or cultural discourse, it certainly is pretty.

But the nagging sense of cheesiness and contrived outer space imagery of Jimenez’s works make them look more like posters or sci-fi book sleeves than paintings. Or maybe the cover of a silly calendar. He may be aiming for the celestial with his many nebulas, stars, floating orbs, planets and explosive fields of color but his paintings are not out of this world.

If Carlos Jimenez is taking us far away in his red spaceship to an orange planet with foggy hills and floating balls, he better bring enough jet fuel to take us back to earth. You can only stand so much time inside an Asia album cover in a field of golden marbles before turning into L. Rob Hubbard or a glimmering space alien. Jimenez might not be a capable painter but he may find success in a variety of other vocations: pulp novelist, greeting card designer, ball collector. The possibilities, like the universe, are endless.

DISCLAIMER: The photo above is not Carlos Jimenez’s work. But you can compare and contrast with his real paintings at your leisure, since it IS a Microsoft wallpaper image.