AN THONY DUBOVSKY DECEMBER 8, 2005 - JANUARY 28, 2006 CURATED BY CHRISTOPHER BROWN
CUE AR T FOUNDATION
We are honored to host this exhibition of California painter Anthony Dubovsky that has been generously curated by fellow artist Christopher Brown. Dubovsky, originally from San Diego, CA, has long been admired by his peers as a painter who has forged a unique artistic voice over the years. Brown's appreciation of Dubovsky's painting demonstrates just such admiration. We appreciate that artists often work tirelessly without thought or concern for exhibition. CUE is pleased to recognize such commitment by affording just such an opportunity, thus celebrating the efforts of artists such as Anthony Dubovsky.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT Something about the last paintings in the world. Not an apocalypse, exactly, so much as the recognition that everything now is different. The sureness of Giotto or Masaccio-or Piero-now held up to the light, in a different key. Where the moment-the instant, even-is redeemed through absolute attentiveness... which takes form in each flickering movement of the brush-not towards a goal, but li-shma-for its own sake. In and of itself. How did Kitaj put it quoting Robert Lowell, quoting Eliot-These fragments I have shored up against my ruin. An offering, a gift even. Thank you. But I wanted to use the word, love, as well... so, now playing in the background...Chavela Vargas, late in life, her voice smokey, just as Rodolfo promised: Pintor, si pintas con amor ... Anthony Dubovsky
CURATOR'S STATEMENT
Delicately scrawled on small squares of cardboard and canvas,
Anthony Dubovsky's paintings describe a world of people and places that seems oddly familiar. Their
understated, shimmering images seem to move in and out of focus, like memories of the time when and the place where-afloat amid veils of light, atmosphere, and space. In these intimate paintings, almost nothing
stands still. Forms hover, light glistens, time-and life-passes by. We know this place; it is where we all live, at the confluence of physical experience and the endless stream of emotion, thought and memory.
Some of the paintings may be diaristic, a kind of visual reportage that finds analogs in the
almost daily written observations that Dubovsky sends out to friends in email form, usually with drawings
attached. Like the analects, as these communications are called, the cardboard paintings are quotidian
'notes to self' that have become, over the years, a memory bank, as it were-studies that sometimes lead ďż˝ toward more complex (though still small) paintings on panels. Other paintings are based on both photoÂ
graphs and his own drawings-Dubovsky has always been a prolific draughtsman-and their imagery varies-portraits mingle with landscapes, dreams hang next to cloud studies, trains, ships, family,
musicians, Poland, China-the flotsam of the looked-at life. An inveterate reporter, Dubovsky paints and writes, it seems, as he breathes, ceaselessly, naturally. But what appears ultimately is less a catalog than a
kind of proof that life is truly, and almost only, the collection of inconsequential moments made significant
by the act of being present, by noticing.
This is not to say that the works appear casual, or their subjects insignificant. In fact, the
very opposite is true. As all good painting is an homage to sight-both to the act of seeing and to the things
seen-these paintings make the ordinary seem like an eyeful. With their vocabulary of floating moons, liquid skies, fickle gravity, and flickering light, the paintings celebrate seeing as an awareness of the extraordinary nature of the ordinary, rather than the mere act of recognition. Theirs is a beauty of
unexpected particularity: of enormous scales and small size, of temperatures and times, and the gestures
that surpass detail, of tender rendering amid fields of brushy simplification. In a world of increasing noise
these paintings look like overheard whispers. They remind us to look again, more closely. Christopher Brown
The River Mere ha nt's Wife, 1996-99 Oil on panel 13 5/8" X 1113/16"
The Boatman (for Alice Dubow), 1995 0,1 on panel 12" X \0"
For Auden, 1998-99 Oil on panel 13 5/8" X 11 13/16"
After Kertesz, 1997 011 on panel 13 5/8" X 11 13/16"
Nad Wis+'! (On the Vistula), 1999 011 on panel 11 13/16" X 13 5/8"
The Gypsy Bride,
0,1 on panel 15 5/8" X 18"
1999
Beulah Land (for Mississippi John Hurt), 2000 Oil on cardboard 8" X 6 7/8"
Fado Alice, 2000 Oil on cardboard 9 1/4" X 8 1/8"
Doheny, 2002 011 on cardboard 8" X 10"
A Hungarian in Paris, 2001 0 I on cardboard
8" X 10"
My First Emperor, 2001
011 on cardboard 71/2" X 7"
After Chuang Tzu XVII (Dark Lanterns), 2005 0,1 and alkyd on masonite 8" X 9"
Bl OS
ANTHONY DUBOVSKY
The painter Anthony Dubovsky was born in San Diego, California, in 1945. He studied with Willard Midgette at Reed College, and has lived in Eastern Europe, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, and Jerusalem. He teaches at the University of California at Berkeley. CHRISTOPHER BROWN
Christopher Brown is a painter who currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. He received a BFA from the University of Illinois and an MFA from the Univer sity of California at Davis, and he served as a professor at the University of California at Berkeley from 1981-1994, where he first met Anthony Dubovsky. Mr. Brown has received NEA grants in both painting and art criticism as well as awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Equitable and Rockefeller Foundations. He is currently represented by John Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco and Edward Thorp Gallery in New York.
CUE ART FOUNDATION MISSION CUE Art Foundation, a non-profit organization, provides educa
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
tional programs for young artists and aspiring art professionals in New York and from around the country.
Gregory Amenoff
These programs draw on the unique community of artists, critics, and educators brought together by the
Theodore S. Berger
Foundation's season of exhibitions, public lectures, and its in-gallery studio program. Gallery internships
Thomas G. Devine
and stipends afford the next generation of art professionals intimate, working knowledge of the art-making
Thomas K. Y. Hsu
and exhibition processes. CUE's 2000 sq. ft. gallery and offices, located in New York's Chelsea gallery
Brian D. Starer
district, serves as the base for the various educational programs conducted by CUE. The Foundation's exhibition season gives unknown or under-recognized artists profes
ADVISORY COUNCIL
sional exposure comparable to that offered by neighboring commercial galleries, without the usual
Gregory Amenoff
financial restraints. CUE does not promote a particular school of artistic practice or regional bias; we only
William Corbett
require that exhibiting artists must either not�have had a solo exhibition in a commercial venue, or have
Meg Cranston
received minimal recent public exposure.
Roy De Carava
CUE's Advisory Council, an honorary group of artists and leading figures from the arts
Vernon Fisher
education, applied arts, art history, and literary communities, has the responsibility of selecting exhibition
Malik Gaines
curators. The curators, in turn, nominate artists to exhibit at CUE, and continue to play a role throughout
Deborah Kass
the exhibition process, helping the artists catalogue their work for exhibition. Both the Advisory Council
Irving Sandler
and the exhibition curators actively participate in the public lectures and educational programs. GALLERY DIRECTOR
Jeremy Adams DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT
Elaine Bowen GALLERY COORDINATOR
Sandhini Poddar GALLERY ASSISTANT All artwork© Anthony Dubovsky Catalog designed by Elizabeth Ellis Photos courtesy of Ben Blackwell
Beahice Wolert-Weese
2005/6
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