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UNTITLED. MIAMI BEACH: JASON MIDDLEBROOK
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On View: December 5 — December 9, 2012 |
 DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASE AS PDF
| Booth A12
December 5 - 9, 2012
Located directly on the beach in the heart of South Beach at 12th Street and Ocean Drive, UNTITLED. Miami Beach is housed in a unique temporary structure suffused with natural light and will take full advantage of the unique attributes of its surroundings.
DODGEgallery is pleased to present a solo booth of new work by Jason Middlebrook at UNTITLED. Miami Beach. Middlebrook's long-standing interest in abstraction, intersecting disciplines and nature are the cross-currents for this body of work: his planks.
Hand-selecting internal cuts of Curly Maple, Ash, English Elm, and Cairo Walnut tree trunks, Middlebrook laboriously covers the planed façades with repeating geometry in highly saturated pigment. His line-dominant compositions imply infinite extension beyond the bounds of the plank form, confronting and expanding the viewer's sense of space. Middlebrook's absence of representational imagery heightens the figurative nature of the planks themselves, while allowing for landscape references to dominate the exhibition. Whether colorful or monochromatic, the paintings fluctuate between being harmonious and incongruous with the natural shape, tone and grain of wood. Middlebrook's planks are a meditation on the complex relationship between humankind and nature, a long-term topic of investigation for the artist.
For Middlebrook, the planks are both objects and surfaces, sculptures and paintings. Whether leaning, or wall hung, the planks engage their surrounding context, connecting the space between the pictorial plane and physical dimension. The series recalls the works of John McCracken, though here the planks contain the memory of time and are painted with highly individualized surfaces. Another influence is Sol LeWitt in his commitment to obsessive line-making on existing surfaces and interest in scale, though Middlebrook is more intuitive than rule based. In certain works, the sensation of movement through color and pattern recalls Bridget Riley, refusing a primary focal point and creating an overall optical impression. At times, scale overwhelms, however the most awe-inspiring moments are ones when the laboriousness and remarkable beauty of Middlebrook's painting embodies the sense of time and magnificence instilled within the trees themselves.
Jason Middlebrook lives and works in Hudson, NY. Born in Jackson, Michigan in 1966, Middlebrook received a BFA from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1990 and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in California in 1994. Middlebrook participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York from 1994 to 1995. His work has been exhibited in public institutions including the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Arthouse, Austin, TX; Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO; Museo de Arte de El Salvador, San Salvador, El Salvador; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX; New Museum, New York, NY; Palazzo Delle Papesse Centro Arte Contemporanea, Sienna, Italy; Santa Monica Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Monica, CA; Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC; Wellcome Trust, London, United Kingdom; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Middlebrook was a 2010 The Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant recipient. In 2012, his MTA public commission, Brooklyn Seeds, was named one of the Best Public Artworks in the US. Middlebrook’s work is in the public collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA; Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Microsoft Corporate Art Collection, Redmond, WA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; New Museum, New York, NY; Progressive Art Collection, Mayfield, OH; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. In 2013, Middlebrook will unveil a major outdoor commission at the Albright- Knox museum, and will have a solo exhibition at MASS MoCA. |
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