Alexander Kaletski "Contemplation"
Dillon Gallery
This event has ended.
“I want to use the least to express the most,” states Alexander Kaletski. Whether in his economical painted line employed against scrumbled canvas surfaces or in the use of found materials in his renowned cardboards, Kaletski works with a fluent freedom that belies the rich layers of meaning in his art. After defecting from the Soviet Union in the early 1970s, Kaletski became enthralled with the high quality and abundance of disposable packing materials in the USA. For the light-pocketed young artist, these rich and varied materials provided stimulating components for the creative process. With a perceptive eye for the striking individual in the crowd, coupled with the confidence that engenders spontaneity, Kaletski’s art revels in flashbulb observations of the extraordinary incidents and individuals that enliven and populate our culture.
His paint and cardboard collage portraits display the spectacular, often riveting characters found in the urban environment of New York City. His use of logo-printed cardboard packaging materials guides his exploration into the themes of contemporary society. Beginning with simple commercial cardboard, Kaletski adds collage and paint, resulting in pieces that provoke, inform, and more often than not, amuse. In addition to the provocative images he produces, the viewer is confronted with the amplification of the logo or design remnant of the original product contained, as well as the cardboard itself, scarred, pitted and torn, now artfully reborn.
Kaletski is also a master of oil painting. He finds figuration and abstraction to be inseparable, and his canvases best demonstrate this. They have been described as a controlled structure of dripped paint that creates free-form geometric shapes, by using uneven and highly energized brush strokes. Kaletski utilizes abstraction to play upon ambiguous images, contradictions and surprises, allowing the viewer to follow his symbols and figures and decide for themselves what meaning coalesces from the whole.
Media
Schedule
from November 03, 2011 to December 06, 2011