Tad Lauritzen Wright
SLOW MOTION CONTEMPLATIONS
These pieces represent moments, experiences, understandings, and misunderstandings along a historical path that observes repeating fashions, ideals, politics, trends, thought processes, and histories. The work is intentionally not about judgment but rather about observation. Art certainly influences what I am doing but so do many things. From an art perspective,
Minimalism, Pop Art, Abstract Expressionism, and Automatic drawing all merge in these works. Extension cords, twisting vines, water, hoses, graffiti, concrete repairs, knots, and tangles are visual references where I see these forms in a literal sense. Memories, observations, and meditations are the foundations for the conceptual intentions in the works.
I have come to believe in connections. Endless connections to the past, and to present moments. Connections that are unseen, connections within nature, connections to each other, connections to everything. The works in this show were primarily made in the Crosstown Makers Space and at my own studio. Tools were used that I’ve never had access to before. My line is as true in these pieces as in the first works I ever made. Everything comes from a place of immediate drawing slowed down. I understand a lot more about art than I did when I started. I’m more opinionated. I’m more critical. I’m more embedded.
The works are fast and slow at the same time. This produces a vibration like slowing down music to make it more pronounced. The energy is contained in the action. Music has had a significant impact on what I make from the beginning. I reached a point where sounds made more sense than lyrics. Sounds had a place to expand from where the lyrics were too direct. Abandoning representational elements in the work has everything to do with possibilities and expansion.
Tad Lauritzen Wright, a Texan, received an MFA from Memphis College of Art and a BFA from Nebraska Wesleyan University. Over the past twenty years, he has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the United States, including Coop Gallery, Nashville; Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville; Anderson O’Brien Fine Art, Omaha; Koelsch Gallery, Houston; Cheryl Hazen Gallery, New York; Cuevas Tilleard Gallery, New York; ACME Gallery, Los Angeles; Millsaps College, Jackson; Arkansas State University, Jonesboro; Pulse Art Fair, Miami; Next Art Fair, Chicago; Brooks Museum, Memphis; Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis; and the New Orleans Museum of Art. He has completed two (?) public installations through the Urban Art Commission in Memphis. His work is in a number of collections including the Tamarind Printmaking Institute, Albuquerque; Fidelity Investments, Boston; The Children's Museum, Memphis; the City of Memphis; Hallmark Collection, Kansas City, MO; Memphis/Shelby County Library and Information Center-Collierville; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; and the Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock. He is one half of the Mellow Mountain Coalition, making collaborative, impromptu, figurative abstractions with fellow DLG artist Hamlett Dobbins.
