NYAB Event - Dave McDermott “The Varieties of Religious Experience”

Dave McDermott “The Varieties of Religious Experience”

Thierry Goldberg

This event has ended.

Thierry-Goldberg Gallery presents THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, the first New York solo exhibition of Dave McDermott.

Using William James’ book “The Varieties of Religious Experience” as a point of departure, McDermott selected ideas from the text that he found resonated with certain aspects of human experience, resulting in a series of subtle, delightfully cryptic series of paintings, drawings and collages.

In the painted assemblages, various forms are placed over backdrops largely monochrome or two-tone. Whether in the abstracted configurations, the cartoonish cutouts, or figures bordering on the representational, the ambiguity of form is accentuated. Here, the diverse items curiously grouped together on the canvas emphasize juxtaposition as something that mutually accentuates play and conundrum. As if set afloat, the objects gathered on the painted surface appear dislocated from any identifiable environment. In this way, they accrue a kind of sculptural quality and a surreal heftiness that brings to mind artists like Mimmo Paladino and Richard Hamilton. This emphasis on the often coy scattering of forms across the canvas suggests narratives, the details of which only the viewer can fill in. In this way, the subjective nature of per ception is highlighted.

Influenced by propaganda wall paintings from the Soviet Union, McDermott seems to pivot on its head the accessibility of ready-made meaning, where the limits of perception are foregrounded. In the collages, “European Diary” or “Woman comic”— using part of a picture of a nude female body (without the head painted over) in one, and an enigmatic fragment of an old man getting somehow titillated in the other — the remainder of these “stories” are hidden away or covered up by other, overlapping visuals that distract from what might seem like the “real” content of the piece. Once more, juxtapositions of components that comprise the collage clash with one another as they vie for our attention. Whatever the image, there is always a sense that something may be untold.

Dave McDermott (b. 1974, Santa Cruz, CA) lives and works in Brooklyn. He holds a Master’s in Fine Art from the Parsons School of Design in New York, and a BFA from The Academy of Art University, San Francisco, CA. He has previously had solo exhibitions at Twig, Brussels; Duve, Berlin; and Grimm, Amsterdam. Group exhibitions include Thierry Goldberg Gallery; Room East; Andre Schlechtriem; and On Stellar Rays – all in New York.

Media

• Painting
• Drawing
• Other

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