These days fine art is much appreciated for its decorative qualities or as investment.  However fine art can communicate other meanings; it has the power to offer to society more than the quality of design or monetary value. 

The exhibition “Beyond Visible Form” on view at Ratio Gallery in Bellport, takes us on such a journey.  It leads the observer into the world of the mind and its power of imagination.  The paintings by Marlies Ihmels reveal much more than the form they represent.

These paintings engage the audience to interact in a philosophical game, challenging everyone to find a new meaning for the objects painted.   The images seduce the viewers to create an ever-changing story through the interaction of their own life-experience and the images represented.

For example the painting “Yam with Stones” (center) is suggestive of a state of transformation, where the painted objects seem to be transcending their own limitations as vegetable and stone. The heap of stones mimics a small godlike sculpture and the yam is really not a vegetable anymore.  Suddenly it has become an animal, worshipping the little godlike sculpture.  Both appear to have come alive. In other paintings we find hints of male or female body forms signifying an anthropomorphic quality. 

The exhibition “Beyond Visible Form” is a lively experience of human existence among inanimate objects, who manage to engage the mind on a different plane causing the viewer to think and smile.