Barnaby Ruhe "Abstractions"

Dorfman Projects

poster for Barnaby Ruhe "Abstractions"

This event has ended.

Ruhe’s Abstractions are freestanding paintings (ranging in varying sizes from 3 x 6” to 7 x 11”) with fabricated wooden box frames, 2” in depth. Each one of the works forms its own unique dialogue: between a collage clipping, and the abstract drips and strokes of acrylic paint (in grisaille and color) that the clipping is pasted upon.

This description is deceptively simple. The part that defies explanation is how Ruhe imbues each painting with a heroic composition that betrays its small stature. The singular collaged piece and the abstraction beyond it interact, interrogate, and animate each other.

Laurence Hoffmann-Quinones perceptively writes, “In theory, by moving the collaged image around the surface of the abstract painting there is an infinite number of possible new compositions. However, in Ruhe’s Abstractions, only one seems to be right. The chosen one. It is dynamic, it is conflicting, it suggests a deepening sense of space, it is the only natural place that it could’ve ended up, but only by Ruhe’s eye and hand. Left to anyone else, it would not have the same effect. Each of these collage/paintings gives “abstraction” a quality it rarely gets credit for: narrative.”

Hoffmann- Quinones’ introduction of the narrative element in Ruhe’s paintings is crucial. As Mr. Ruhe openly admits, he has an “art historical bias” that causes him to question how the artists, artworks, and art periods that are alluded to in each of the collaged elements would have used “Abstraction” as a tool in their visual language.

Again, Hoffmann Quinones recognizes that Ruhe is extending “an invitation to artist, art period, or medium to consider how they may use this tool of painterly abstraction—that Ruhe exhibits so skillfully—were it accessible to them in a time that pre-dates abstraction.”
This ‘invitation’ of sorts forces the viewer to take on Ruhe’s art historical bias as well, and reconsider the artists and artworks that pre-date him. It calls their aesthetic legacy into question as you re-imagine classic works, recognizable names, with the visual language of abstraction. Barnaby Ruhe’s Abstractions creates a discourse that paradoxically expands the concept of visual language, by limiting it to a simple intermingling of image and abstract paint.

Media

Schedule

from December 13, 2012 to December 15, 2012

Opening Reception on 2012-12-13 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Barnaby Ruhe

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