JOHN PATRICK SALISBURY reception may 3 r d 6 – 9 pm
UNDERTOW I have been at work on this collection of paintings with assemblage for the past two years. This project has followed me from a basement in New York to a barn outside of New Orleans, in Folsom. The Chinese birch panels are loaded with enamel paints floating amid numerous coatings of transparent polyurethanes that––after many dozens of layers––creates a beautiful golden trap for the intimate collection of objects embedded within it. Each painting is an exposure of the tiniest and the most unseeable. From coalescing cells, to shards of coursing atoms, to gangs of clustering amoebas, each shape has it's own identity and agenda. The vibrating chaos of String Theory intertwines with other nanoparticles and organisms, all of which dwell in some form of water, from a rain puddle to the deepest, blackest sea. Of course the scale is very mixed up, from protons to pollywogs, but what is beyond our easy perception tends to occupy the same mind-space (for me anyway). Occasionally these hyper-miniatures interact with additional out-sized items which have crept into my life, a rusted lid of a can, a handfull of pokeberries, a shed snakeskin, a chunk of metal. Each one of these holds a nonspecific memory, a familiarity, that needs to be floating deep within these blown-up worlds. The repeated use of the same paints and chemicals eventually developed into a system, and from this, connections formed from the very act of creating the pieces. Over the course of weeks and months, the layers built in my mind, as they did on the panels, like the stacked pages in a book. The actions and the subjects have folded into the same space––frozen in time, fused like a prehistoric creature in amber. JOHN PATRICK SALISBURY
may 1st – june 3rd, 2008 reception saturday may 3rd 6 – 9 pm Front Cover: ReIN (Pond Mechanics with Wayward Ocean Ink) 80" x 72" polyurethane, enamel, wax, epoxy, and other on wood panels, 2006
WHcb (Invention with Visitaion) 48" x 32" polyurethane, enamel, India ink, and other on birch panel, 2007
BCir_a (Initial Intention for Good Things) 48" x 32" polyurethane, enamel, India ink, and other on birch panel, 2007
BCir_b (She Sees the Intention for Good Things) 48" x 32" polyurethane, enamel, India ink, and other on birch panel, 2007
UTrch_c (All Eventually Arise, Macro-Entropy) 48" x 32" polyurethane, enamel, India ink, and other on birch panel, 2007
ETrn_b (Peer Under Covered Trails) 48" x 32" polyurethane, India ink, food coloring, and other on birch panel, 2007
518 julia street, new orleans, la 70130
LwNG_b (Centerpiece), 2008, detail 48" x 32" polyurethane, plastic, rubber, ink and other on birch ARTWORK © JOHN PATRICK SALISBURY 2008 CATALOG © GALLERY BIENVENU 2008
504.525.0518
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