“White: Part 1″ – Installation Views

Last Wednesday, Stacey and I made the 9-hour drive to Lexington, KY to visit family and to also install my solo show in Indianapolis.  Thursday morning we drove the 3.5 hours to Indy.  There I met for the first time in person Christopher West of christopher west presents.  The gallery is located on a really cool strip in downtown Indy which was a huge relief to me.  You just never know where you will find yourself when it comes to art spaces.  CWP is a small, but extremely nice gallery that is situated in the same building as Dean Johnson Gallery (and design firm).  DJG focuses on contemporary design and is directed by Christopher.

As I said above, CWP is a small, intimate space that measures approximately 9′ x 13′ but with tall ceilings (12′+) and large windows that look out onto the strip.  As I suspected, the small space allows for a focused showing.  This excited me given the plan to show two different bodies of work during the run of the two-part show.

“White: Part 1″ is up until July 17 and includes four Wenge pieces from my “White Paint” series.  Three of the works were completed in 2008.  The fourth was conceived specifically for this show.  Here is an image of the new piece:

Dormer
Enamel, polyacrylic on Wenge wood
23.25″ x 10.25″ x 1″
2010

In conceptualizing a fourth piece for the show, I knew that I wanted to make something that responded in some way to the gallery space.  I knew that the “empty” wall in the space was the one between two large windows.  I asked Christopher to provide the size of the windows and made Dormer in scale to the windows (1:4).  Since the piece would hang in between the two large windows, I opted to paint the center half bright white.  The result, I think, is a piece that subtly references both the physical size of the windows but also their function (i.e. framing a view to someplace else).  The piece ends up being about what is there, what is only kind of there and what is not there.

I feel rejuvenated after seeing the show installed.  This is the first time any of these works have been shown and I enjoyed seeing the dialog between the works.  Also, I was particularly struck by the shadows cast by Elbow Afloat (see below).  I’m pretty confident that I will be pursuing some more works like this in the near future.

Due to the various light sources in the gallery, my installation images are far from perfect.  However, they should give you a sense of the show:

Elbow Afloat on left, Fortress on right

Fortress on left, Slope on right

Dormer

Slope on left, Dormer on right

You can view studio images of these works by visiting my website.

Additionally, a small review of the show has been published by an Indianapolis art blog.

I’m looking forward to Part 2 of the show and seeing the difference in the gallery when 24 paintings are installed instead of just these four.