![]() Deedra Ludwig uses serial practice to capture the essence of her extrinsic content on canvas. Minton’s complex subject matter derives from the processes and practices of his art. Interestingly, although clearly immersed in his three-dimensional medium, Minton has repeated his woodcut painting experience in his original medium by painting black stripes onto the surface and etching into them. The rich colors of cottonwood and mahogany and the confident stance of this freestanding figure create an exotic and imposing presence. Deedra Ludwig’s “Dreams of Wilderness”Įuropean modernism appropriated the forms of non-Western cultures to revolutionize and, in some cases, spiritually inform the European avant-garde. Minton’s sculptures have consistently and self-consciously derived from a wide range of cultural traditions as well.Īlmost five feet tall, the totemic “Least Inscrutible Girl,” from 2010, combines the “guardian” figure common to many indigenous cultures with a vocabulary of biomorphic, modernist forms. Feathery marks and criss-crossed hatching break the fields of washed gray, pink and brown, however, and details surrounding Minton’s contour figures reveal his delight in his materials. Thin contour lines animate the pale, painted surface of Minton’s “Mother and Child.” At first, this 48-inch-square panel seems very similar to the surrealist compositions of Joan Miro and the automatist abstractions of Arshile Gorky in its use of abstract line to reveal universal pictographic content. ![]() Subverting the very process of woodblock printing, many of the incised contours and feathery texture marks were cut into the paint after it was applied to the surface of these woodcuts. Faint perspective lines and angled areas of flat color hint at an illusion of three-dimensional space, but chisel or burin marks that texture the off-white areas emphatically assert the materiality of the literal surface. Within each of the trapezoids composing the larger figure’s trunk, gracefully undulating lines and convoluted, painterly ribbons contrast with thick black horizontal stripes. In the middle of the smaller figure’s sharply defined black torso, points and lines jostle for space amid crisp parallel hatching. 1” lies a compendium of the gestures and lines of modernist abstraction. Within the bustling space of “Formal Greeting No. The bold contrasts and crisp, angular forms of Minton’s lively composition recall the jazz-inspired abstractions of Stuart Davis and the animated graphics of Saul Bass, while the tenderness of the figures’ casual embrace brings to mind Francis Picabia’s Dada mechanomorphs. Its right elbow merges with a tan circle where the head of the smaller figure might be, and its arm drapes over the smaller figure and dangles a flat, red, heart-shaped pendant tenderly over its companion’s chest. ![]() Two figures emerge out of a stack of black and off-white trapezoids, red and tan disks, black and white stripes and linear patterns, against a background of large, flat orange and gray shapes defined by thick black lines. The right figure playfully raises its left arm above its head, casually pointing its index finger toward the smaller figure on its right. 1,” an incised and painted 48-by-32-inch birch panel, exemplifies Minton’s complicated but captivating subversions of the woodblock medium and of modernism itself. He became enamored of the relief process of cutting into the flat wooden surface and decided to treat the block itself as a singular work. Presented on separate floors of Tew Gallery through June 1, Minton’s multivalent and playfully complex woodcut paintings, together with Ludwig’s fecund layering of diaphanous veils of color and lush natural imagery, create a conceptual playground and a sensory feast.Īn established sculptor of engaging, freestanding wooden figures, Minton began exploring the woodblock printing process in 2006 while recovering from an injury that made it difficult to work with heavy pieces of wood. The “paintings” of Kimo Minton and Deedra Ludwig explore texture, line, medium, modernism and spirituality … and originate everywhere outside of the flat space of painting.
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