Joshua Dildine “Notating Hi Pops”
Freight and Volume
This event has ended.
Freight + Volume presents the first east coast solo of LA painter Joshua Dildine, titled Notating Hi Pops. Casting a wry and languid glance at appropriation, and picking up where the “Pictures” generation left off, Dildine’s new paintings have a reckless yet controlled flair, which utilize autobiographical family album photographs - including prom pictures, wedding pictures, baby’s first step, vacation memories, etc. - and turn sentiment and nostalgia on its head. His visceral gesture and accelerated brushstroke are loaded with sensual energy, harkening to the Ab-Ex days of pure delight and mystery in paint, yet placing these gestures on top of faded, kitchy, sometimes cloying memorabilia. The fifties photo meets the fifties painting yet the end result inhabits a quintessentially new timeline – an artist’s 2015 Facebook universe gone awry.
Dildine also toys with perspective quite literally. In works humorously titled (a la Ogden Nash or ee cummings poems), “Dang Darn Pad and Odd” and “A Bad Dodger Shunts Tot”, the artist turns the horizon upside down and suggests an implosion of worlds colliding: interior facing off with exterior. The brushstroke careens this way and that and leads us in and out of memory, into the present and beyond. Like a Jetson’s tour through Ab-Ex painting, Dildine seems to say – buckle up and follow me through a Cliff Notes speed read of 50s, 60s ,70s and even 80s expressionism – and hang on tight. It’s a Fun House hall of mirrors and we, as viewers, are simply along for the ride, roller coaster style, with the artist as our fearless guide.
Media
Schedule
from May 21, 2015 to June 27, 2015
Opening Reception on 2015-05-21 from 18:00 to 21:00