David Humphrey “I’m Glad We had This Conversation”

Fredericks & Freiser Gallery

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David Humphrey has been making paintings of conversations and using the idea of conversation as a method since he first began showing in the nineteen eighties. Families, amorous partners, animal predators and pets, co-workers and all manner of social groups have conversed (and continue to) in his work over the last three decades. By mixing images found in electronic or print media with imagined subjects, or by performing types of painting (like gestural abstraction or photo-projection) as self-collaboration, Humphrey builds a dialog with others into his process.

These new works stoke conversations between abstract forms and a variety of human or animal protagonists. Locations talk to people, recognizable images chat with paint smears while looping gestures address spectators within the picture. “I’m glad we had this conversation” was overheard by Humphrey on a crowded street and he thought it seemed neither glad nor a conversation, and that the “we” was bossily one sided. Humphrey celebrates the slippery ways images don’t always mean what they seem to be saying. His work promotes the open-ended conversations that happen between us and the objects and people around us, virtually and physically.

David Humphrey (b. 1955) has been the subject of 44 solo exhibitions including McKee Gallery, NY; Sikkema Jenkins, NY; Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami; and Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati. His work is in the collections of several museums and public collections including Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston as well as the Saatchi Gallery, London. He is currently teaching in the MFA programs of Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania. He was awarded the Rome Prize in 2008.