DUOLOGIES

Robischon Gallery is pleased to present “DUOLOGIES,” an extensive, multi-part, group exhibition featuring thematic alignments of pairs and pairings of artworks by select gallery artists. In a wide-ranging presentation of thirty-five regional, national and international artists, the exhibition features a specific curatorial objective: two side-by-side artworks by one artist, or one artwork by two different artists paired with intent to amplify or initiate a discourse between the independently created artworks.

               To note several examples, beginning in the Entry Gallery, a still life theme anchors the longest, fifty-foot wall which highlights the duo of luminous paintings by a surrealistic stand-out Christian Rex van Minnen (CA). A proximal pairing of an impressively carved still life wall sculpture from Walter Robinson (NM) is placed in dialogue with David Kimball Anderson’s (CA) contemplative bronze Buddha hand which in contrast evokes a sense of stillness. Having a conversation all on its own Variant, an imposing, provocative, political portrait by Chuck Forsman (CO), hangs in relationship to Quiver, Robinson’s second pointedly witty sculpture. Adjacently, Spanish artist Paco Pomet brings his incisive political humor and painterly prowess into the conversation expressing the current global zeitgeist.                

As a pairing in the larger Annex Gallery, the brightly hued, geometric patterned eight-foot column by Pard Morrison (CO), Sunflower, meets Stephen Westfall’s (NY) Del Parto, an equally bold, yet small-scale, geometric canvas. The complimentary pair of striped wall sculptures nearby from innovative conceptually driven Derrick Velasquez (CO) and the vivid abstract paintings by accomplished artist Deborah Zlotsky (NY) further energize the space. The range of approach within the broader gallery encompasses all manner of abstraction, including the colorful and sizable pair of sewn-canvas paintings by Jonathan Parker (NM) residing in the front window in concert with the remarkably glazed ceramic sculptures entitled olive and flesh, by Scott Chamberlin (CO).

Moving from the textile-based abstraction on view, “DUOLOGIES” also embraces the conceptual. The featured pairing by Amy Ellingson (NM), a smaller digital robot drawing, The Minerva Chronicles No. 29, versus a large hand drawing, illustrates her obsessive mark-making is placed alongside the compelling performative practice of Erin Wiersma (KS) with her resulting layered burn drawings. The commanding architectural drawing on canvas, Template, by seasoned sculptor Linda Fleming (CO/CA), was an actual working template for one of the artist’s sculptures of the same size, and is paired with the more minimal, sensitive plaster work, Lateral Scalenes, by David Fought (CA). Gestural abstraction holds the space with a pairing of two different, yet complimentary painters. Deborah Dancy (CT), who often works in multi-media, is known for her uncommon open brushwork and broad compositional sense. In tandem, Tom Lieber (HI) explores language that focuses on nature and an abstract painterly nuance.

In the intimate Viewing Room gallery, landscape themes inhabit the space with a snow scene, Dark Willow, demonstrating the spare confident brushwork of Trine Bumiller (CO) paired with Hide-Out, a complex painting by Allison Gildersleeve (NY) known for her investigation of overtly colorful, dense terrain as her subject. Claire Sherman’s (NY) intimate gestural grass painting in sunset hues, confers with both the large-scale Eastern Colorado vista photograph of Kevin O’Connell (CO) and the contrasting abstracted pinhole camera photographs by David Sharpe (CO).

Comprised of sixty works, each of the distinctive artists of “DUOLOGIES” explore myriad artistic modes including painting, drawing, sculpture, textile, print and photography in remarkably unique and different ways. When placed in context within their various galleries, and in relationship from one artwork to the next, each pair and pairing is meant to invite spirited dialogue and provide a glimpse into the intriguing spectrum of artistic practice within Robischon Gallery.

 

Entry Gallery:

STACEY STEERS

“I create animation that follows an intuitive, organic thread of exploration. My characters are silent film actresses, whom I reactivate and embody with curiosity and endurance. ‘Night Hunter Cottage’ encompasses the world of the film ‘Night Hunter,’ it is both nest and stage for Lillian Gish. The ‘Metrometer’ speaks to the discourse between the two characters in my film ‘Edge of Alchemy.’ Mary Pickford plays a scientist and Janet Gaynor, the creature who the scientist ‘Frankensteins’ into being. The lens in front of the ‘Metrometer’ distorts the viewing and parallels the divergent desires of the two characters.”

FRED STONEHOUSE

‘’’The Natural History of Home’ is part of an ongoing exploration of what it's like to live in a rural village surrounded by nature, having grown up in a very urban environment. The sense of magic is informed partly by the sheer amount of wildlife and forest around me, but equally by a willingness to approach it from a place of wonder vs a place of experience and scientific or practical understanding.  

‘Cheap Shot’ is very much an autobiographical snapshot of having raised two sons who were very involved in youth sports. I actually coached Little-League baseball and basketball for ten years. It's meant to represent my role in instilling good sportsmanship in my kids, despite their very competitive and aggressive instincts.  

Obviously, all of my work, even when it is based in lived experience and autobiography, is realized through a lens of imagination and the fantastical.”

JERRY KUNKEL

“I believe we share a common appetite for self-reflection born of a collective and universal desire to comprehend, both physically and emotionally, the world around us. In that light, I am interested in our momentary reaction to everyday stimuli, that moment that summons a private response - a response that we may not feel compelled to share…”

CHRISTAIN REX van MINNEN

“These two paintings for ‘Duologies’ are inspired by the compositions of Ambrosius Bosschaert (1573-1621) who specialized in painting flowers within a stone niche. I have enjoyed the structure and geometry in stone providing a controlled space for this eruption of surrealistic unplanned chaos to live and emerge. And the window provides some fresh air to the usual hermetic, dank and enclosed spaces I’m more accustomed to imagining within.”

WALTER ROBINSON

“In my work, I often reinterpret movements in art history to uncover fresh content, disguising cultural critique with craftsmanship and folksy treatment, so that the critical content arrives as a surprise. The historic genre of ‘Still Life’ presented moral themes through allegory, with human vanity and mortality as recurring motifs. In this Frankensteinian arrangement, I’ve juxtaposed parts of older work, newly fabricated components, and objects I’ve collected, using specific elements to reframe broader concepts like death, aggression, power, consumption, and desire. For example, aggression and mortality meet in the boxing gloves and human bones that make up the letter ‘S;’ oral gratification, sustenance and the human life cycle come together in the letter ‘E’ made up of a baby bottle with beer taps. Beyond using classical themes from art history, the reimagined composition represents my efforts to patch together new meaning from parts of my own life and history."

DAVID KIMBALL ANDERSON

“It is a delight to see the pieces chosen from inventory by the staff of Robischon Gallery are

representative of my studio exercise of pause and indulgence in beauty.

I work on several bodies of work at one time. Current titles are: ‘New Physics;’ ‘The Fragrance Bottle,’ Medieval Shit,’ and ‘Must I Explain?’ Each require reading, research and responsible editing.

It is a pleasure to step away from content and context from time to time and simply make something enjoyable to look at, for no other reason nor intent.”

DAVID KROLL

“I paint personal refuges and interior landscapes - places to visit for solace and sanctuary. Much of my work is intuitive. I try to create a connection – however fleeting - between the viewer and the power of landscape, the web of life, the idea of nature itself.

I think about the natural world not as an expendable resource but as a memory of home, the subject of longing and dreams. And I am fascinated by vessels, the egg, the nest, the bowl, the landscape, the sky- the parts of nature that hold and contain, whether natural or man-made. My paintings are also about contrast- the contrast between light and dark, movement and stillness, civilization and wilderness. These have been central themes of my work for many years.”

PACO POMET

“Although my work may sometimes lead one to think that there is a vindictive undertone in my semantic approaches, the truth is that I rarely address specific issues, nor do I usually make my convictions clear and propose ad hoc activism. In my works, I usually choose to propose images that formulate ambiguous interpretations and suggest open meanings, allowing the viewer to speculate about what they see and make their own decisions as they navigate through what is represented in the painting.

But there are times when reality is very stubborn and becomes too problematic, and it is not the time to look the other way. It is time to be direct and incisive. The events that have precipitated onto the global political map in recent times are leaving little room for the play and recreation that art has the pleasure of offering us. It's time, then, to get into ‘protest’ mode and use the aesthetic medium as a peaceful yet incisive weapon to become part of the side that refuses to look the other way and must take a stand and point the finger, point out the problem, and clearly say: NO.

These two small recent works, created specifically for this exhibition, strive to be honest in this sense, and while they are not devoid of a certain irony and dark humor, they harbor a small glimmer of optimism deep within…

WALTER ROBINSON

“The red hat in ’Quiver’ refers to our current political climate, while obliquely reminding us that the slings and arrows of political fortune can change over time. As with “Still Life,’ some elements are hand-carved while others are found. The arrows—a fairly antiquated form of weaponry— might be read in the context of America’s uneasy history of colonizing and conquest, issues that seem to be recurring in the present.”

CHUCK FORSMAN

“This one off, satirical painting is based on the famous portrait of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David. It was meant to mock hubris but the outcome of the 2024 election has unsettled its message. Leave it to history!“

 

Annex Gallery:

DERRICK VELASQUEZ

“The ‘Untitled’ vinyl series is like a rubber band that stretches into the farthest reaches of my conceptual practice of sculpture, photography, painting and collage work. It reflexively contracts to a center ready to spring forth new ideas via finite yet repeatable layered structure and interpreted experiential color ranges.” 

DEBORAH ZLOTSKY

“I'm interested in the way history evolves through the accumulation of actions and reactions—in the way complexities are built over time through coincidences and accidents. In ‘Rewind’ and ‘By hook or crook,’ I focused on two connecting shapes that flow together yet pull apart. In my paintings, abstraction provides both sensory pleasure and a language of metaphor to explore the complicated relationships between the past and the ever-unfolding present as well as the intricacy of even the simplest of unions.”      

STEPHEN WESTFALL

“I use geometric structures to distribute my colors in an imitation of randomness. I say 'imitation' because truly random distribution would present a lot more clumping of value and chromatic temperature than I want. I’m searching for a sense of aeration and glow, like sunlight on a laundry line or a sun-baked billboard on the eastern Arizona stretch of I-40. I’m also hoping that the color distribution will contest in some way the symmetry of my pictorial architectures."

PARD MORRISON

“My ambition regarding the conception, fabrication, and interaction of my work is to simply place my paintings outdoors. When inspiration comes to me in my studio, I do my best to stay out of the way and let it emanate.”

BETTY MERKEN

“Hand in hand with color and light, duologies are at the core of my studio practice. As parallel, but unique forms of expression, my paintings and monotypes often employ diptych formats and share a common language of process, materials, and geometric abstraction. Frequently sequenced with subtle variations, a deeply personal oeuvre of serial imagery is created.”

JAMIE BRUNSON             

“My formal, abstract, process-based studio work is connected to my ongoing Kundalini meditation practice. Rooted in immediate sensory perception and physicality, meditation practice informs the way I use the material qualities of paint to capture observed phenomena. Living in New Mexico, my abstract work is influenced by visual elements in the natural and built environment, like seasonal changes in color and atmosphere, and the tactile geometry of architecture. 

Painting materials can yield both fluid, organic marks— connected to observed Nature— and hard-edged solid forms; together these qualities evoke shifting focal points, the contrast between the analytical, ordering mind and the sensate experiences of the body. In ‘Cascade’, I've deliberately drawn correlations between quiet, contemplative states and formal visual language, balancing between process, reference and metaphor.”

TED LARSEN

“On and off for decades, my practice has involved seeing, understanding how I see, and developing my abilities to see more clearly. Part of that journey is reductive; elimination of the unnecessary to see what is essential. Other times seeing is additive, taking it all in, all at once. Most of the time our experience of seeing is in between.

I make lattice constructions which position themselves in between reductive vision and comprehensively taking it all in. In areas the layering is super dense while in others it becomes diffuse, and patterns can clearly be seen. Color plays an important role as well; it can lead the eyes in a different way from how form can move them. In between the mind races to bridge the gaps. It's an amazing process of pattern recognition and is central to what makes us human.”

ANA MARIA HERNANDO

“As a multidisciplinary artist, my work focuses on the feminine, using empathy to make the invisible visible and to question our preconceptions of the other, their worth, and their value. In my recent pieces, I explore color and movement in tulle textural paintings that offer a feminine rejoinder to historical movements in abstractions. These framed textile works unapologetically contradict and embrace the inherent lavishness of the tulle, alongside shared vibratory color, and spatial concerns.”

SCOTT CHAMBERLIN

“For me the importance of abstraction is in its ability to be evocative in very complicated ways and in very simple, fundamental ways. I am interested in making artwork that is understood or apprehended through involuntary or unconscious urgings, in ways other than through reason or intellect. I want the response to be more instinctual, to come through the gut more than through the head.”

JONATHAN PARKER

“These large pieces sit in my imagination as works that slowly unfold or reveal. Many of my small works are minimal in form, however, when minimal forms are put together in my larger works, they become more complex - connecting with each other in interesting ways. I find my eyes dancing over the pieces, settling on a section and then moving on to another, and another - each time I look I find kinships I didn’t see before. I consider each piece an abstract narrative, with many paths for the viewer to access the work - be it shape, color, texture or material.”

STEPHANIE ROBISON

“I combine traditional carving techniques and needle felting to explore forms that feel familiar yet remain unnamable, embracing contrasts between hard and soft, organic and geometric, natural and architectural. Both processes are hands-on and meditative, rooted in craftsmanship and allowing the materials to guide the evolution of each piece. Using the wall as a site introduces the challenge of working within shallow or collapsed space, where I can further investigate form, color, volume, and texture.”

DON VOISINE

“Architecture – a language of space – delineates boundaries, exposes points of access, exit or entry, and enables the user to interact with the structure of a defined space. This simple vernacular of architecture informs my paintings. Working with symmetry and a standardized format to reduce variables, I establish borders on all planes. Color activates an apparent void; a reflective surface opens a window into the painting, both mirroring and obscuring the view. Such devices restrict and ultimately reveal the interior spaces, establishing a fluid subjectivity between the viewer and the work.

The title ‘Three Act’ is a reference to stage plays. Some viewers have said the horizontal bands in my paintings often suggests a space like that of a proscenium or stage. 

               The smaller painting, titled ‘Noir (Time)’ refers to the old black & white crime movies. 

From time to time, I like the challenge of making close valued paintings yet still have each part be distinctive. There are four different black colors used in ‘Noir (Time).’ This painting has no reference to architecture or theater and is perhaps among the more purely abstract and formal works in my oeuvre.”

DAVID FOUGHT

“Operating in a slightly horizon-less sculptural landscape, I hope to both offer and continue discovery into the mystery and profound beauty of ‘thing-ness.’ Underived from drawings or photographs, these works come from my engagement with the physical world and a desire to find objects inviting my gaze —objects that compel me to look, and to look again."

LINDA FLEMING

“I made it as a full-scale template for a sculpture titled ‘Intricacy.’ I gessoed the canvas and drew the sculpture parts with graphite. I then laid the steel strap directly on the drawing to mark the angles. These parts were all assembled on the template on low wooden blocks to hold them up off the surface. I then welded the steel parts together. There are scrapes and spark burns including the hole from the activity. Once the sculpture was removed, I loved the action and history in the drawing, so I worked back into it. I rubbed pigments into the surface, put permanent pigment into a chalk line to make the radiant lines, varnished it with acrylic varnish to stabilize the pigment and then mixed white pearlescent pigment into varnish and painted the cris-crossed forms. Then three or more coats of acrylic varnish over the entire drawing. The holes and marks give it purpose and evoke the physicality of the large sculpture.”

AMY ELLINGSON

“I am interested in the incalculable effects of the rise of digital technology on both artistic production and on the experience of looking at art. My process is a conflation of traditional methodologies and new technologies, of hand-made and digitally produced, of strict protocol and strategic workarounds, of natural and artificial, and of fast and slow. My work addresses this moment in time, in which we, as a species, are betwixt and between the analog past and a digitally immersive future.”

ERIN WIERSMA

“Each ‘Transect’ series drawing emerges from an embodied experience of the Konza Prairie, shaped by conditions of fire, wind, and terrain. Using materials such as plant char, soil, and sediment, I create marks by pulling, rubbing, dragging, pushing, lifting, and sweeping paper over the land. ‘Transect 2022 116 SpA (Sound Winds I)’ and ‘Transect 2022 105 HQC (ShW, Alluvial Plain II)’ reflect the prairie’s cycles of renewal and loss, offering a record of direct interaction with the land—attuned to its shifting ecologies and to both its deep histories and time.”

AUDREY TULIMIERO WELCH

“The title for this body of work comes from ancient Egypt. ‘The Book of Two Ways’ was a map depicting the underworld with two routes, one land and one water that were to guide the deceased to a heavenly home in the afterlife. ‘Book of Two Ways 13’ and ‘Book of Two Ways 12’ capture both the essence of land and water, and thematically address the search for home. Intimate in scale, these works combine graphite, acrylic, flashe, and neo crayon arches paper in raw and poetic ways. Qualities of land, stable and solid, are echoed in my use of taped lines to reference structure; alternatively, the fluid, ever changing quality of water are felt in fluid gestures and how paint is poured and layered in translucent washes on the surface. Ultimately, I want my paintings’ surfaces to convey a sense of dispersion and displacement, of arriving and departing, of journeying across both external mapped geographies and the inward landscape of the soul.”

DEBORAH DANCY

“I make paintings that engage beauty and tension. I consider constantly changing environments like maps and land masses, jagged trees and bark from the nearby woodlands, and discarded debris. Meaning is unstable, since shapes mingle, shift, and position themselves within a field of agitated or flat color.”

TOM LIEBER

“My paintings are visual expressions of being affected by my environment, be it the ocean, trees, the wind... Combined with a desire for balance, breath, and movement...”

 

Viewing Room Gallery:

REBECCA CUMING

“This work draws inspiration from the vast open spaces where I live. I explore the tension between order and wildness; the geometry of the plowed field, the cacophonous bird life and a foreground that is created by expressive marks, textures and layered color. My process is shaped by these dualities: the urge to let intuition lead the way and the comfort found in the repetition of patterns carved across the landscape. Captivated by the ambiguity of an expansive horizon, I experience both grounding and the promise of unknown possibilities.”

PETER di GESU

“The large, open Western spaces remain the main inspiration for my paintings. They may start with a photo from a road trip, and then change to more of an abstraction of line, color, form, and space. There is something universal about our connection with the earth and sky, the vastness and the expansiveness of space that pulls us beyond our own limited perceptions.”

TRINE BUMILLER

“’Dark Willow’ is part of a series titled ‘Eternal Return,’ the concept that time repeats itself in an infinite loop. It reflects on the continuous cycle of life and death and the rebirth of the forest after a fire. Finding grace in a world that can seem bleak through environmental degradation, it represents hope and new life.”

ALLISON GILDERSLEEVE

         “Places are not inert; they are repositories for all that has passed through them. In my work, time is not sequential and location is not fixed. I pick apart and reassemble the familiar, using the variability of memory as my guide. As I put the pieces together, the work skips through time at an erratic pace, shuffling the monumental with the mundane and twisting landscapes and interiors into compositional mazes.

          There’s a narrative overload to my work in that each layer carries the immediacy of a moment in real time, whether it happened an hour or a decade ago.”

CLAIRE SHERMAN

“I became interested in how my work could present spaces that confront the view in some ways. The smaller paintings are based on the idea of looking down on the ground and finding the intimacy of seeing something right in front of you, which is a shift from the bigger paintings.

I want the paintings to pull people in and push them out. I’m interested in how paint can be used to describe something in a trompe-l’œil effect, where the paint itself becomes the object, but also falls apart while you’re looking at it in abstraction.”

KEVIN O’CONNELL

"I am haunted by vastness. The experience of a distant unending horizon and an unprotected, vulnerable, existential exposure stay with me always - I have been obsessed with it ever since my early travels across the Great Plains in the late 1970s. My explorations on this land have led me to appreciate that it is what remains of the Great Inland Sea. The plains still feel as though they are underwater.

Surely, the water will return."

DAVID SHARPE

“Working with pinhole photography - its imagery, goals, and purposely soft focused images - is somewhat apart from the imagery and goals of most standard photography with its ever-sharper image formats. I worked with black and white images for several years - enlarging these images and further emphasizing their soft components. 

One of the best descriptions I have heard for my photographs is that the image is something you would see upon first awakening before you are fully conscious. I very much like that idea of one’s apprehension of the world.”