Working both with and against the natural grain and knots in internal slices of Cury Maple, Redwood, English Elm, and Cairo Walnut trees, Jason Middlebrook laboriously paints abstract patterns and designs on his leaning plank paintings. This material, along with Middlebrook’s continued investigation of man’s intersection with nature, reference the passage of time and growing cycles as much as McCracken and minimalist art practice.
The work of Robert Davis/Michael Langlois is often inspired by the visual language of the music world. In their newest body of work (the most sculptural to date), their richly stained wood constructions pay homage to the abstract linear designson Eddy Van Halen’s guitars. These perforated screens, which hang on the wall or stand dividinga room, often incorporate the artists’ photo-realistic paintings of spray painted symbols.
Whether working with a table saw, teaching himself to chair-chain, or sourcing wooden panels from the local hardware store, the self-described painter Dan Gunn builds malleable surfaces that use transparency and opacity to create balance and tension. His wall-based and free-standing works, comprised of materials like Plexiglas, glitter, paint and fabric in addition to wood, suggest different functional, aesthetic and cultural relationships between constituent parts that often evoke set-design or commercial display.
The majority of Joel Ross’ recent sculptural work has taken the form of roadside signage that the artist constructs in most part of wood, secretly installs, and abandons at locations ranging from single-lane gravel farm roads to major highways on the outskirts of suburban Illinois. His luscious, but documentary-style photographs of these installations become the only record of his signs which tend to mysteriously disappear quickly from these desolate locales. Here we get a special exhibition of his sign constructions, sculptures onto themselves, slated to be installed.
