Tom
LaDuke: New Work
February
27 – April 24, 2016
CRG
Gallery
195
Chrystie Street, New York, NY 10002
Entering
this long and well-spaced out gallery, viewers will be met with a few small
sculptures, small and normal scale paintings and graphite drawings, and a very
large scale painting in the back. The path from the door to the back of the
establishment is quite a journey; audiences will stop to gaze at the works that
confront them before reaching their final destination. The artworks shown are beautifully
cinematic and reminiscent of what may be a representation of dreamscapes.
History Believes
Itself, 2016
mixed media and
acrylic on canvas over panel
38 x 45 1/2 in.
Spectators
will be intrigued by the fantastical and colorful nature of the paintings. The
artist is clever in playing around with mixed media, using techniques that
create interesting impasto-like strokes and spills. The colors in the
background happily and amazingly blend into one another, and the foreground
elements contrast heavily to separate themselves from the far back. Many of
these subjects are quite mysterious, seemingly popping into the foreground out of nowhere. For example, in History Believes Itself, the objects, such
as the water well, are bizarrely clean with sharp edges compared to the bright
and foggy background. They seem to break into the environment, dying for
attention. Pieces of what looks like a castle descend into a beautifully detailed
blue void that possibly represents a lake at the bottom left. A mix of mysterious
bright and dark greens spill not downwards, but sideways, out of the canvas. The
rest of the paintings seen in the show carry identical motifs of bright colors,
actual texture, brush strokes, and sharp edged objects with hidden characters and
items that may take the viewer a while to spot.
When
gazing at the artist’s Liquid Sim
series, which are black and white pictures, it may take the viewer a little
while to find out that these images are not photos, but are actually graphite
on paper. LaDuke uses a superb rendering technique that is very reminiscent to liquid
modeled in 3D computer software, and skillfully uses the beauty and shading of
chiaroscuro.
The
two sculptures displayed requested a strong sense of space and appear to be
softly delicate. Wake and Happy Trail are very interesting in the
sense that they were both constructed from a combination of found objects and
3-D printing. Hair was used as an ingredient in both of these works, possibly
paying tribute to their cute and very feminine nature. These pieces are quite lonely;
looking at them will ask for the viewer to fantasize an alternate space for the
both of them, such as a mountain and grassy forest, so that they are no longer
situated on a lonely, small, white pedestal.
New
Work by Tom LaDuke is definitely a sight to see. The show
is bound to give any viewer a great gallery experience and is certainly worth a
trip to the lower east side of Manhattan.
Wake, 2016
salt, hair, powder
titanium pigment, cyrano acrylate
23 x 11 x 15 in
Happy Trail, 2016
silicone, deer fur, fingernail, flash, cyrano acrylate
19 ¾ x 7 x 10 ½ in.
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