He's an artist armed with strong and unusual new paintings. A relative newcomer to the exhibition scene, Tyler Bohm will present "Living Structures" at Elements of Art throughout October, 2003. There will be about 18 large acrylic paintings in the show, which is the artist's first major exhibition. The opening is set to be an outstanding event, a tribute by curator Roman Czech to a young man with a promising career.

"Living Structures" is a series of large paintings that, although highly abstracted and geometric, are imbued, or inspired by, the concept of cities, actual cities and their individual structural personae. The artist has lived in most of them - the paintings and the cities! - and has been able to capture thru his cubist-like depictions, the specific personalities of various sites, even when, at first glance, the finished work seems highly abstracted. The work can be divided into two categories: there are the paintings in which pure geometrics, a kind of jigsaw puzzle design, is uppermost, and there are others in which actual skylines and structures are more evident.

Short North, 36" x 60", like most of the "Living Structures," dances with strong forms, solid colors and outlines. Abstracted buildings have definite, if wavy, shapes. Behind the Short North, the tall buildings of the Columbus skyline tilt toward and away from each other. According to my notes, the Convention Center is the blonde building; the dome of the Greek Orthodox Church is green. High Street resembles a gray snake. Perspective shifts: we look down at blue-gray curves, curves that Bohm explains suggest construction work in progress. Overall the colors are vivid, yellow with sunlight, even though we don't see the sun. Although there are no people, these structures are inhabited with motion, i.e, they are living structures.

There are dusky tan colors in Odessa, they congeal in pan-shaped squares. Like a smeared-out poem. Bohn says that Odessa, a beautiful city, has become tarnished, is decaying, but remains beautiful, with dull oranges and browns. This painting has fewer sharp corners than the others.

Vertigo, 48" x 60" is one of Bohm's "puzzle shape paintings" - my description, intended as positive and meant to convey a graphic image for readers who have not seen the painting. Vertigo was painted, yes, drawn, upon a silver background and contains many lines, shapes, and faint color smears. It is map-like; but it is not a map. It's a fantastical architectural design as seen from above, Bohm's viewpoint. In the lower right are two purple balls with a red ball between them. Three grey rings conjoined by the same faded purple loop form, a violet-arched logo below the upper three balls. "It's a logo, kind of, a mark," Bohm explained. "The city is a complex concept. Alive, changing growing." Somewhere between and within the many lines and boundaries, dim and name-less objects take shape. Tiny squares, a non-pointed star. Bullet-shaped towers, puzzle pieces, intersect with each other. Vaulting lines, representing skyscrapers shoot out at us. Perspective is flat yet dizzying. Vertigo, a mixed media on canvas, is vintage Tyler Bohm.

Bohm's colleagues sometimes compare his work to Cubism. I agree with him that both the abstracted work and the more representative, appear Cubistic, emphasize the geometric, yet are not actually Cubist. Bohm tends not to "cube" objects, extra-polate from them. Instead, he employs a modus that either invents objects and symbols, as it does in Vertigo, or he transforms an actual landscape into a kind of stage design, a stylized backdrop. Short North, Odessa, Warsaw, German Village, Chicago, Edinburgh.

Bohm paints every day, spends hours at that work, and he paints looking down, with the canvas below him. This method gives his paintings a map-like-aspect. Flat and intriguing.

Born in Columbus in 1976, the artist describes himself as self-taught. He grew up in a home where artistic pursuits were fostered, however. His mother is an artist and his father is an established architect. Bohm has lived abroad for the last few years and recently returned to Columbus. He has an engaging interest in other cultures, languages, history, and art. He received a BA from Kenyon College in 1999 and shortly thereafter went to live in Moscow, Russia, and later Oxford, UK, where he received a Master's of Philosophy from Oxford University in 2002. While in Russia, he worked for an American NGO and pursued his interest in Russian art and architecture. In the UK, Bohm worked for the London-based theatre company Fat Beast Productions where he designed the theater's printed materials. He has previously shown his work at 2Co's in the Short North and at the Arcana Gallery in Oxford.