IMAGES

Exhibition Dates: May 20 – July 2, 2010

OPENING RECEPTION: THURSDAY, MAY 20, 5 – 8 pm

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday, Noon to 5 pm, or by appointment.

Carl Berg Projects is pleased to present a new PROJECT by Phil Bower that is based on black and white photographs of four paintings from De Kooning’s “Woman” series. The original De Kooning Women can be seen as a template for an artist presenting a uniquely personal and exploratory painting technique through a simple vehicle of crudely defined figures, which keep the paintings from submitting to pure abstraction and add an emotional “human” element. The figures themselves, while riffing on sexuality, are basically vessels containing the painter’s fascination with his own experimental style of color and mark making.  Similarly, Bower sees the four paintings in this show as an advancement of his own explorations of the painting medium.

For many years, Bower has used obscure historical films and found photos as a “vessel” for presenting a developing style of painting. Like De Kooning’s “Women”, the image was always secondary to the process of interpreting information contained within the black and white Xeroxes, or pixilated photographs, through an abstract journey of color and mark making that yielded a distinctive and deeply layered painting. Within these photographs, the out of focus blur of a moving tree branch or smudgey area of sky created opportunities for painterly gestures and abstractions. The lower the quality of the photograph, the more murky the information, the better.

Referring to Xeroxed historical photographs of De Kooning’s paintings, Bower uses the information contained in the small black and white reproductions to create a similar “vessel” to promote his own brand of contemporary color and mark making. The Title of his work commemorates the date the original De Kooning was finished; insisting that the subject is a documentary photograph and not a painting.

Within these “Bower after De Kooning” images, he has taken the opportunity to present a completely unique and signature brand of painting the same way De Kooning used these “Women” to present his techniques. Ironically, Bower’s methods couldn’t be more removed from De Kooning’s.  Built up from thin washes and delicate glazes, Bower’s palette patiently develops into an endless spectrum of contemporary colors, including subtle metallic and iridescent pigment. Technically, the work owes nothing to De Kooning and is void of any nostalgia.

“Bower After Women” is an exhibition that can best be described as a “PROJECT”.  Intended to stand separate from his previous work, the paintings in this show serve as a pivotal transition point into a new phase in the artist’s practice.