Marty Kahnle: Blobs Rule At IronWorks Gallery

There are three key things to know about West Orange-based painter Marty Kahnle: he has great chops, his own vision and a sense of humor. That sense of humor plays out in his vibrant, engaging and thought-provoking canvases on exhibit now through Sept. 10 at the IronWorks Gallery at 406 Tompkins St. in the West Orange/Orange Valley Arts District. (VAD)

That sense of humor also plays out in conversation — we enjoyed a long, far-reaching talk on both the serious — art and ambiguity — and the lighter-hearted.

Kahnle, 42, is the sort of guy you want to introduce to your baby sister or your daughter, which means he’s wonderfully married to a supportive wife, Catherine Kahnle; the couple have three kids ranging down from age 8. They all do art together in the living room. “My wife and family bring a missing ingredient,” Kahnle said, “I can’t even put it into words.”

What Kahnle doesn’t want you to know or dwell on is that since his leap of faith move with bride Catherine from Georgia to New York City in the 1990s, he’s been a highly visible media executive for some of America’s most prestigious magazines. Among his friends are marquee names in publishing and broadcasting, many of whom are going to find out about his “double life” as a painter now: In addition to his one man show here, Kahnle is also part of a group show opening September 3 at the prestigious Boltax Gallery in Shelter Island, New York on the storied east end of Long Island, where you can bet said marquee names summer. Plus, he has been invited to show at the Contemporary Art Fair at the Javits Center in New York City come Nov. 18-20.

In our cynical era of hype and connections, Kahnle wants his art to be judged on its merits, not who he knows, who will come to his shows.

Kahnle and his family moved to West Orange in 2006. He discovered the VAD and VAD Executive Director and IronWorks curator Lorena La Grassa discovered him when he was making inquiries about studio space. “I was excited to find the VAD and the gallery space in our backyard,” Kahnle said.

So, right now we can enjoy the largest exhibit of his art — about a dozen and a half canvases are holding a highly engaging dialogue with one another at IronWorks.

I urge you, and maybe the kids, too, to join the conversation. If you’re around this coming Friday, Aug. 26, Kahnle is throwing an opening party  at the gallery from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. “I'm hoping to host a neighborhood get together, so I've invited Brooklyn phenom, ‘HERE,’  to play a set — twin brothers, a drummer and guitarist, playing psychedelic originals in the garden,” Kahnle said. There will be some wine and cheese, too.

In other words, after years of keeping relatively quiet about his work, Kahnle is hot and going to get hotter.

Kahnle would rather not name his paintings —“I’d rather just call them untitled," he says — but against the presence of so many paintings, that would be unwieldy. His titles give a sense of what awaits: “Sock Blobs,” “Twisted Blobs,” “Office Visit.”

Kahnle poses biomorphic forms — his blobs — as elements in a land or seascape; or as a bizarre vase in an interior still life; or sets them in abstract space, as with “Bite,” where the blobs take on an ominous vibe. As settings and shapes vary, some blobs become anthropomorphic. Or they can wonderfully morph between rocks on the shore and empty cartoonist bubbles asking some unknown question as in “Blobs Go To Miami Beach.”

In “Lagoon At Dusk,” one of the larger works at IronWorks, the blobs take to the sky, pulsating clouds against a more serene landscape. “I sometimes like to juxtapose a calm space, here the water and the grass, with the more intense, the sky,” Kahnle said.

Always there is ambiguity, the intersection where the dialogue between the painting and the viewer and the viewer and the artist begins: “There’s a story, a narrative,” Kahnle said, “It’s up to the viewer to invest in what that means to him. I know something is going on, it’s exciting and humbling to be part of that dialogue.”

Kahnle’s reception and party at IronWorks Gallery, is part of the August ART LOOP, the peripatetic, last Friday of most months, art crawls among the galleries and site specific installations in the VAD. This coming Friday’s offers another chance to visit the marvelous Sculpture Garden at 1 Mitchell Street where there is a closing party on Friday at 5 p.m. It’s a great show: Don’t overlook Jody Leight’s delightful, metal “Spring Flowers,” by the fence along Mitchell Street, towards Scotland Road. Jerry Gant’s “Window Dressing IV — Re-Tracked” installation at the Oualie Gallery at 540An Freeman Street is very powerful. I enjoyed a long talk with him there yesterday for an . 

Learn more about VAD and the IronWorks Gallery at www.valleyartdistrict.org  The gallery is open most weekdays from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m, but calling ahead at (973) 674-0183 is advised. Also by appointment.