Dennis Dawson and Paul Paddock “In the Company of Ghosts”
frosch & portmann
This event has ended.
frosch&portmann presents In the Company of Ghosts, a two-person exhibit featuring recent work by Dennis Dawson and Paul Paddock. The show includes drawings, paintings and sculptures.
In the Company of Ghosts is built on a yearlong friendship and a mutual admiration for each other’s work; although the artists once shared a studio and worked together on and off for many years, this is the first time they exhibit together. While stylistic similarities might not be apparent, the show will provide insight into overlapping ideas and concerns. Both Dennis Dawson and Paul Paddock are drawn to the “company of ghosts” and relate to the theme in their oeuvre.
Dennis Dawson starts his artistic process by reworking torn out magazine pages; he paints over the found images, cuts and collages onto paintings on panel. Layer after layer of new imagery is added, combining mass-media content with a very personal one.
For Dawson, ghosts turn up in everything he does as an artist. His interest lies in the process of painting via Modernism. The ghosts are the artists from past times who influence his own practice and therefore are omnipresent; if painting is always already dead, Dawson finds himself in the company of ghosts in his studio. He feels like entering into familiar territory when making a mark or starting a new painting, as if in the presence of artists before his time. Dennis Dawson sees his collages, drawings and paintings as an indicator of time passing, a reminder that you will die — “memento mori”.
Paul Paddock’s watercolors are modern fairytales and mythologies that have yet to be written. The vast negative space of the paper is populated with figures that arise from the artist’s singular vision and imagination.
In his new body of work, Paddock reflects the idea of idol worship and the concept of eternal life after death. Ghosts are memories, some haunting, some loving; they are inherent in the artist’s thoughts and manifest in his recent work. The figure in “Where do Rainbows come from” is a ghostly little girl with a bloody knife in her hand; she just stabbed a unicorn — killing a myth that bleeds rainbow blood. Another drawing shows a false prophet luring a sick boy into a deadly trap. Aware of his mortality, the boy is seeking solace in religious beliefs; all he finds is a priest sitting in a tree, wearing bunny slippers. Paddock’s new drawings explore innocent childhood curiosities, debunk old myths and question false-faced consolation.
Media
Schedule
from January 16, 2014 to February 23, 2014
Opening Reception on 2014-01-16 from 18:00 to 20:00