EXHIBITION IMAGES | WORKS | PRESS RELEASE
For his first exhibition with the gallery, Johannes VanDerBeek seeks to capture the frenetic materialization of imagery and elusive distortion of space that comes along with an altered state. The works are not chasing drug- induced visions but instead, aim to incorporate a psychedelic undertone that allows their visual logic to meander into less definable territory. If there is a state of mind that they attempt to depict, it’s the moment when the lens of the eye is inundated with a flourishing of information, and objects like flowers, transform into radiant fixtures. The landscape based imagery fixates on elemental forms like leaves and branches, and how their characteristics lend themselves to more abstract configurations of pattern and shape. As lines on leaves twist and shift, their identity bleeds into other symbols, like masks and shields. Feverish weavings of engraved lines, and patches of color, entangle the picture plane with an overgrowth of details, and tropical scenery is compressed into a dense foreground. This sense that the imagery is pushing forward stems from how the work is physically made. Clay, paint, and oil stick are pushed into a plastic mold, and cast in a way that encases all of the marks in a unified background of color. The fact that the paintings are cast objects gives them a footing as wall sculptures but they are equally preoccupied with the mystery of turning raw materials into a representational illusion.
On a personal note, the artist states: I want to recognize my de facto godmother (technically my dad’s first wife) named Johanna VanDerBeek as playing a big inspiration in my use of color and my immersion into whimsy of the tropics. She’s had a house in Amagansett for over thirty years that she refers to as ‘Tahiti’. Every summer growing up we would visit her and I would absorb her exuberant flair with color and decor. Among many other things she is a constant example of the benefits of living brightly and more specifically bringing a little hot pink and lime green to the party. In doing a show down the road from a place that meant so much to me it was hard not to pay homage to our Tahiti.
Johannes VanDerBeek (b. 1982, Baltimore, MD) graduated from Cooper Union in 2004. His work has been featured in High, Low & In Between at White Flag Projects in St. Louis, A Disagreeable Object at Sculpture Center, Long Island City, National Projects at PS1/MoMA, Amazement Park: Stan, Sara and Johannes VanDerBeek at the Tang Museum at Skidmore College, Personal Freedom, Portugal Arte 10 Biennial and Trapdoor, an exhibition organized by the Public Art Fund at MetroTech.VanDerBeek lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and is represented by Feuer/Mesler Gallery in New York.