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oil paint acrylic
Currently on view at
Gift of Ron Rozzelle and Rosa Patton
The brilliant Gate of Heaven is a kind of summation of Bireline's approaches to his art and the world. Everything in the painting is part of a stage set, announced by the curtain above and the two wings leading to the gilt mountain beyond. In this theater of the mind nothing lasts: art, represented by the stone foot removed from whatever statue lay above it, is not eternal; the tire and the cinderblock are castoffs, the detritus of our civilization. The red crosses may suggest our efforts to find something lasting in religion. The crosses, on tiles that cover only a portion of the stage floor, lie above an image that Bireline uses more than once-the inescapable and all-consuming flames of time. Within the stage set, we appear to be trapped atop the fire. A three-sided steel mesh fence and a cyborg hand bar the way to a small city gate that opens onto the craggy golden peak and pink sky beyond, a scene that is made to look like it has been painted on a stage flat. Max Halpern, George Bireline, The Many Roads Taken (Greenville, NC: Greenville Museum of Art, 2004) pp. 22-24.
Accession Number: 2006.93
Measurements:
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