July 10 - August 29, 2021
From Umbrella Gallery:
“Matthew Wood is a local Dallas based artist who has recently relocated back to DFW after two decades of bouncing between New York City and Los Angeles. His Biomorphagrams explore the concepts of contemporary figurative abstraction and beg the question, “What makes a painting a painting?” This is Wood’s first major exhibition in DFW and second solo exhibition to date.”
Reception: July 24, 2021 | 6–8 pm
2803 Taylor St.
Dallas, 75226 Texas
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1 comment
It’s difficult to imagine that artists today would accept the possibility that there is a stable predicate “painting”. To “beg the question ‘What makes a painting a painting'” is to forget that the non-aesthetic can be claimed for the aesthetic, regardless. If the point here is to ironize the fact that the indeterminacy of artistic forms is simply the common sense with which artists now are obliged to take for granted, lest they be called retrograde or reactionary, then these works may be less about the future than a recollection of the past. The 1970s — one slice of the past — seems to be on our minds at the moment, though perhaps absent the critical reflection required to recognize that the limits of the ego-less artist’s use of aleatory processes had already been reached by then. Nostalgia, in the form of a rehearsal of abstract figuration, is a comfort and may be the most acceptable way to express a desire to return to a certain stability of artistic identity. We’ve had returns to order in art before, demonstrating that to go against the grain of the commonplace is not for the faint of heart.