Please don’t lick the paintings

Thursday, April 13, 2006 | 7:14 a.m.

The paintings of raw meat by Belgian artist Cindy Wright are engaging, intense, beautiful and, well, a little revolting.

"Baconcube 3," a portrait of dense bacon slabs neatly stacked, incorporates deep glistening reds melded with clear fatty tissue and moist pinks.

"It's just a remarkably frank painting," said Libby Lumpkin, consulting executive director of the Las Vegas Art Museum, where Wright's works will be on display Saturday through June 11.

"It's beautiful and at the same time shocking."

The show "Cindy Wright Paintings: 2004-2006," which opens Saturday at the museum, is all about perspective.

The 10 large-scale oil-on-canvas works oscillate between photorealism and abstraction.

From afar, the images, which include humans and objects as well as meat, are alive and familiar. But up close, the bizarre world of detail lurks within the subjects - the folds of skin, facial features and meats.

"I like the confrontation," Wright said of her paintings of raw meat. "For one person, it's disgusting, for another it's pleasure."

Wright began painting the meat three years ago and says her subject matter continues to evolve.

"It comes actually from the human figure," Wright said Tuesday morning while strolling casually before the works. "As a student I wanted to study from the nude model. I began to ask, 'How can I work with this in a different way?' "

Wright photographs her subjects, then paints them, manipulating them only slightly to obtain her desired result.

Wright, who doesn't eat meat, said she has no agenda to push in her paintings. Working with objects is part of the evolution of her artistic process.

"It becomes more of an object," she said. "I don't have a relationship with it."

Similar to "Baconcube 3," the subjects and objects in the still-lifes and portraits are perfectly posed. Alone.

The show is a nice catch for the nonprofit museum that is carving its new direction under Lumpkin, who joined it last summer.

Wright is a cutting-edge new artist who is garnering attention internationally.

In December Lumpkin came across Wright's work at Art Basel Miami, an annual fair, where it was being shown by the Los Angeles Mark Moore Gallery, the first in the United States to have a solo exhibition of Wright's work.

"I thought it was a very striking painting," Lumpkin said. "I like the way she had such mastery of traditional painting techniques and could produce a trompe l'oeil painting and be very contemporary and fresh."

Knowing Las Vegas Art Museum couldn't afford to ship the work from Belgium, Lumpkin worked a deal with Mark Moore Gallery and arranged to have a portion of the exhibition brought to Southern Nevada after it closed in March.

Other pieces in the exhibit come from private collections in the United States. "Baconcube 3," which according to the online art clearinghouse artnet.com, was recently acquired by the Brooklyn Art Museum, was shipped from New York.

It is the piece, Lumpkin said, she had to have.

Also in the exhibit are "Collared Beef," "Untitled (Sleeping man)" and "Meat 4," a painting of pork that her husband was eating in a restaurant in Spain. Wright photographed it in the restaurant.

A vibrant portrait of a Stratosphere cocktail waitress, clad in a purple dress and delivering two bottles of beer, was even worked into the exhibit.

"Roastbeef," the painting that first greets you as you enter the gallery, is a bit erotic with its reddish, pinkish, fleshy folds. It was an effect the artist wasn't striving for, but said she knew it would be interpreted that way.

"It was just a strong image," Wright said. "Most of the time I'm searching and I want to have a strong image."

Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $6; $5 for seniors 55 and older; free for children 12 and younger when accompanied by an adult. For more information, call 360-8000.