Douglas Witmer

Friday, December 05, 2008

interview at "visual discrepancies"

Brent Hallard, in Tokyo, has just published a short interview with me related to my current work. Please have a look.

Labels: critical reviews, my work, news

Friday, August 03, 2007

gallery siano exhibition reviewed

Cloud Cover paintings, 2007. Black gesso and acrylic on canvas. Installation view at University of Maryland. (They are in a "salon-style" configuration currently at Gallery Siano...no photo unfortunately.)

Today's Philadelphia Inquirer includes a review of "Summary, 2007," the current group show at Gallery Siano that features my work, and mentions my work specifically. I'm represented by four "Cloud Cover" paintings that I debuted at the University of Maryland earlier this spring. The show has been extended until August 18, by the way. The full review is below.

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Summery summary
by Edith Newhall

At some point in the near future, I'm sure Gallery Siano will begin to hew to a particular aesthetic, as it has already taken tentative steps toward doing. For the time being, though, there is its summer show, "Survey," a bright, good-natured three-ring circus that wants to be appreciated by everyone.

There's plenty to like in this show of mostly paintings. Of the painters working in various modes of abstraction - and who number 18 among the show's 27 artists - Jon Manteau is a scene-stealer with his "Template" of housepaint applied every which way to a large rectangle of plywood. Robert Goodman is no wallflower either, slashing circular strokes of vivid colors around an ovoid of yellow. On the gentler side, Donna Usher's paintings of floating, candy-colored, bubble-like shapes stem from images envisioned while meditating.

Siano also seems to have a predilection for hard-edged geometric work, the most interesting examples of which include Douglas Witmer's modestly scaled paintings of floating bars of color on grayish fields, and Alex Paik's partly obscured alphabet letters on matte pastel backgrounds.

Among the more representational paintings that stand out are Miriam Singer's composition of streets and houses in a loose grid that can be read as an aerial view, a filmic series of views, or diaristic notations of travel through a city, and Rebecca Saylor Sack's winsome gestural, semi-abstracted landscape.

Gallery Siano, 309 Arch St., 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. 215-629-2940 or www.gallerysiano.com. EXHIBITION EXTENDED THROUGH AUGUST 18.

Labels: critical reviews, exhibitions

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

parting words from richmond

I'm off to the University of Dayton. Meanwhile, my exhibition at Red Door Gallery in Richmond, Virginia closes this coming Saturday. Brick Weekly published this thorough review of the show, by Vittorio Colaizzi, today. Since Brick is not online, I've excerpted below. You can read the full review here on my site.

Decoration haunts abstraction, pacifying its disruptive potential so that it may be assimilated into “the arts.” The best paintings are embodied visual thinking, and we think them every bit as much as we see them. Decoration, on the other hand, is not thought but recitation, the expert assemblage of various tropes for a handsome effect. This dialectic has nothing to do with style or technique, and cannot be simplified as “rough” vs. “slick.” Nor is this distinction intended to denigrate all pattern-based abstraction, which can sometimes be a corrective to stagnant conventions. Decoration occurs when a viewer is told what he or she wants to hear, and abstraction occurs when comfort is refused. The distinction is rarely clear, and viewers will always disagree on what constitutes mere repetition and what constitutes adventurous dwelling in the unfamiliar. Douglas Witmer incorporates the very opposition of decoration vs. thought, or recitation vs. discovery, into his paintings, and makes it a part of our experience.

Read the complete review...

Labels: critical reviews, exhibitions