‘A Long Moment’ Recent Paintings by David Molesky
Realistic figurative painting had been on the outs with the mainstream art world since the church of modernism captured and made believers of just about everyone in the 20 th century. Beginning in the ‘post-modern era’, a term hotly debated for describing the current state of contemporary art, a select few painters have taken up the traditional figurative painting style of the old masters and used it in a new way to describe the world around them. David Molesky is one of these painters. Having studied under Odd Nerdrum, the most famous of the contemporary painters working in the grand European tradition, Molesky has created a body of paintings that explore the psychological situations of humans in a highly technological age through the use of ambiguous, psychological narratives. In this context, the paintings in ‘A Long Moment’ give us a full view of how Molesky is exploring and reacting to the world around him. The most apparent aspects of this body of work are the complete rejection of the human made cityscape and the advanced technologies that make it function. In its place, Molesky has located all of his figures in natural landscapes of his own making, which create a heavy psychological effect on both the figure and the viewer. This reaction against the manmade world comes from the artists’ belief that humans are too disconnected from the natural world, causing them to move at a pace that does not allow them to experience the magic and mystery that Mother Nature creates every day. Another important aspect of the work is the figures themselves, along with their ambiguous state in the landscapes. Unlike traditional narrative paintings, where the story is clear and the meaning is readily determinable, there are no such clues as to why the figures are behaving as they do beyond themselves. This removal of the figures from any recognizable story is drawn from how living in the advanced technological society of today continually puts individuals into states of ambiguity, isolation, and alienation on a daily basis. The paintings of David Molesky are a clarion call to the seemingly deaf world around them to slow down and reconnect with the natural world. They also remind us that the technologically advanced, manmade world that we surround ourselves with, while appearing to connect us more, is actually putting more distance between individuals and pulling us further away from the natural world. They are both a reaction to, and a dream for, a culture that solipsistically removes itself from the things it needs most.
Curator Greg Flood
Chariot, 2007/2011 oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches
Profit, 2007 oil on canvas on wood 10 x 14 inches
Scout, 2012 oil on linen 9 x 12 inches
Greg Flood: How do you feel about your work being associated with the Kitsch label that is used to categorize certain artists? David Molesky: I am okay with it because of my association with Odd Nerdrum. Nerdrum and his circle have made a great effort to change the connotation of the word to be a counter philosophy that supports work that does not fit within modern art theories. I get asked what I do all the time and I say that I am a painter. From that response people usually think that I am a house painter. I then have to say that I am an artist. I don始t like to say that because I think that painter is a more honest word to use. To me the idea of an artist came with the idea of wanting to be trendy and fashionable. There is a lot of looking over the shoulder to see what other people are doing. I had a strange moment in elementary school when my class was given a drawing assignment by the teacher. I got so absorbed in the drawing that I didn始t notice what other people were doing for a long time. When I finally stepped back to look at what I had done I looked up at the rest of the kids in the class and found they were all looking at each other始s work and were essentially making the same drawing. I was surprised and I must have had a strange look on my face because the teacher came over and told me that I was doing the assignment right, even though my work was vastly different. GF: What is your source of inspiration for what you paint and what is going through your mind while you are painting it? DM: I am working within a tradition of painting used to depict dramatic narratives. Historically these works have illustrated the Bible or Ovid始s Metamorphoses. Using a similar pictorial language, I chronicle specific escapades from my own adventures and stories in nature. I look especially to Rembrandt and Titian for solutions to the visual challenges in composing the scenes I want to paint. Rather than look to written stories passed down from oral traditions, I believe I am living in a grand story, and I see the experience of life as my source narrative. Within that I am exploring the interactions between humans, animals, and primeval nature, nature being a landscape, and the timelessness of human behavior and its unchanging nature. GF: Could you talk a little bit more about the primeval and mystical aspects of your life and how they have become the source of inspiration for your work? DM: For as long as I can remember, I would wander out into nature and get lost in a trance like state for hours at a time. In doing so, I experience a relaxed state were I no longer feel confined to my own form, and experience a melding with my environment. When I am in this state, wild animals do not startle and in some ways seem to express a curiosity about what I am. Since the oldest paintings recorded, humans have told stories about the relationships of the human to its surroundings. Its an important tradition to keep alive now especially as we race towards a more disconnected fast digital culture.
GF: Looking at one of your more complex and psychological works called 驶Swimmers,始 2011 (oil on linen, 32 x 42 inches) are we seeing you revisit a relationship you had with a woman in your life? DM: The answer is yes and no. It is more of a contemplation on relationships and the difficult moments where it is difficult for a man to connect to a woman. The location and inspiration of this scene comes from a heated pool of water I would visit with another artist I was living with while I was staying in Iceland. We would become very affected by the endless hours of darkness and our interactions would become stressed. We would visit this heated water pool to relax and reconnect with each other. So, the painting is about reconnection on a certain level, but at the moment we see they are still separated and he is in a moment of contemplation. GF: What is will be your next step and what does the future hold? DM: I am going to continue work with the narrative path. I will definitely keep up the four color palate in my work (using only white, black, red and yellow). I am definitely interested in working with the inspirations around me in the studio: the people and the landscape. I want to bring people and nature back together here, where it is accessible in the city. I would really like for the busyness of the world to slow down so people can find the beautiful, mystic moments when they present themselves.
Originally Published in San Francisco Examiner, December 2, 2011
Elk Man, 2007 oil on linen 7 x 9 inches
Quicksand, 2007 oil on paper on wood 12 x 9 inches
Hermit, 2008-2012 oil on canvas 13 x 10 inches
Serpentine, 2007/2011 oil on twill linen 18 x 12.5 inches
Komodo, 2012 oil on linen 18 x 20 inches
Spaceman, 2008 oil on linen 19 x 24 inches
! Even the most cursory look at David Moleskyʼs paintings tells us that he is fully invested in the physical tangibility of paint as it relates to the psychological tangibility of the myriad subjects that populate his work. Over the years, these have ranged widely, running the gamut from thickly painted abstractions to fantastic, quasi-mythical landscapes, and on to solitary human figures executed in the kind of thick impasto brushstrokes of the type that have come to be associated with Bay Area Figuration. But every time that Molesky takes on any subject, he always makes it his own by way of an unmistakable painterly touch. It is something akin to a Midas touch and something that cannot be taught—it is, in fact, a sign of the confident grace that emanates from an untroubled mind that is capable of fully being in any given moment where his paintbrush conveys pigment to any waiting surface. It is worth noting that Molesky has done a great amount of traveling, mostly in Europe, and this is especially impressive considering the fact that he is still in his early thirties. He has spent extensive periods of time working in Austria, Poland, France and Italy, which has given him a first-hand familiarity with a great sampling of the grand tradition of European painting, as well as the complex cultural habitats that frame the local understanding of that tradition as an extended family history. This leads us to an important point to be made about Moleskyʼs work, in that it bespeaks an almost completely unmediated relationship to the historical practice of painting, one that is uncontaminated by the way that the mass media skews and dilutes the experience of that tradition. Whereas most American painters of Moleskyʼs generation have chosen to position their work in relation to the various pop media clichés that are loosely arrayed beneath the shopworn banner On a Detour from Valhalla, 2008 of Pop Surrealism, Molesky has instead ! ! oil on linen , 58 x 45 in. ! ! Private Collection Oregon aligned his practice with the mythopoetic wellsprings that have sustained painterly embodiment as a primary mode of cultural self-understanding for over 500 years. Along with that position come the analogies that can be drawn between painting as a composite layering of colored surfaces and individual subjectivity as a composite layering of experience. Both need to take place in their own time and at their own pace, even if the demands of the world that surrounds them always call for more velocity, more efficiency and, above all, more abbreviation—that being coded communication
called by a more descriptive name. Whereas many artists make their work to reflect and accommodate those calls, Moleskyʼs reverses that polarity by making paintings that slowly reveal themselves to the viewer. By insisting on a slow, gradually unfolding revelation of their semi-secret contents, his paintings remind the viewer of the truism that runs “life happens pretty fast—if you donʼt slow down once in a while, you might miss it.” Perhaps most significantly, from 2006 to 2008, he apprenticed with Odd Nerdrum in both Norway and Iceland. Nerdrum is a world-renown artist who has adopted the old master techniques of Rembrandt and Casper David Friedrich to make compelling allegorical images of the starkest aspects of the human condition, and more than anyone alive today, he is the practical keeper of the grand tradition of European painting. He is the senior living practitioner of what art critic Donald Kuspit has called “The New Old Masterism,” a recent phenomena in contemporary painting that willfully turns its back on a now overinstitutionalized (pseudo) avant-garde art that has degenerated into touristoriented “postart” spectacle. The premise of New Old Master art is that painters can synthesize modern Man in the Forest , 2008 oil on linen, 41.5 x 35.5 in. content and traditional technique to make images that give a unique dramatic form to post-modern consciousness. As Kuspit writes, “New Old Master art brings us a fresh sense of the purposefulness of art—faith in the possibility of making a new aesthetic harmony out of the tragedy of life without falsifying it—and a new sense of artʼs interhumanity.”(1) It is clear that Molesky learned a great deal from his sojourn in the northern climes in general and from Nerdrum in particular. Many of the subjects that he has chosen to paint during and immediately after his apprenticeship show telltale signs of Nerdrumʼs influence, for example, the Wagnerian theme of Man Running In the Forest, in the billowing clouds featured in On a Detour from Valhalla (all 2008). That influence also goes beyond subject matter and into the realm of style, as is evidenced in the way that Molesky paints some of his landscapes as vast impersonal spaces suffused with a crisp Nordic light.
exerpt from In A Larger Moment: David Moleskyʼs Allegories of Being By Mark Van Proyen, corresponding editor for Art in America
Svarten, 2007/12 oil on canvas 16 x 19 inches
Horse Boat, 2009 oil on linen 22 x 28 inches private collection, CA
Hestar, 2006 oil on linen 30 x 32 inches private collection, CA
Oogle, 2007 oil on linen 19 x 24 inches private collection, CA
Jan-Ove Arrested, 2007 oil on linen 17 x 14 inches
Rescue, 2007 oil on canvas on wood 22 x 18 inches private collection, CA
Accepting the torch from the grand tradition of European painting, I am most influenced by Titziano, Da Vinci, and Rembrandt. Unlike these painters of the past that have based their narrative imagery on the Bible and fables, I compose scenarios that are sourced from life experience. However, my intention is to bring to light moments that contain a sense of mythology. Informed by the studies of Jung and Joseph Campbell, I strive to construct archetypes: stories that contain significance without a heavy stamp of cultural conditioning. A quality in these scenarios and interactions between players and symbols comes forth that they are somehow familiar despite being viewed for the first time. In todays technological mayhem, it has become more challenging to maintain the sense of meditative calm required to keep ourselves open to experiences of mystery. Our upbringing in society has trained our minds to think rationally and this has lead to a neglect for these faculties of our mind that exist for the experiencing the fantastic, wonderful, and enigmatic in life. For me the slowness of painting provides an important counter point to the acceleration of modern culture. In the stillness of the handcrafted image, I reflect my experiences. David Molesky Rome, Italy May 2013
Berglind Jona, 2007/2011 oil on linen 16 x 14 inches
Dogg, 2007 oil on linen 14 x 11 inches
Bjarki, 2008 oil on twill linen 14 x 11 inches
Man Running, 2008/2011 charcoal on paper 20 x 16 inches
Horses, 2007/2010 graphite on paper 16 x 20 inches
DAVID MOLESKY! davidmolesky.com 415-844-0828
EDUCATION: 1999! !
University of California at Berkeley, Bachelor of Arts Dept. of Art Practice & PreMed emphasis in Neurobiology
1997!
Universitas Gadjah Mada, Semester Abroad, Jogykarta, Indonesia
STAGIAIRE: 2006-8! Apprentice to Odd Nerdrum. Iceland, Norway, and France
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS: 2014!
Copro Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (forthcoming)
2013!
A Long Moment: Allegories. a.Muse Gallery. San Francisco, CA (forthcoming)
2012!
AIR/WATER, the fridge, Washington, D.C.
2011! ! ! !
Protean Dreams, Artspace 712, San Francisco, CA A Journey Back, 12 Gallagher Lane, San Francisco, CA Smoke, Basement Gallery, Oakland, CA Eclipse of an Undercurrent, Marjorie Evans Gallery, Sunset Cultural Center, Carmel, CA
2010! !
Turbulent Mirror, Rae Douglass Gallery, Berkeley, CA Spume, Canessa Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2007! !
Equinox, Terrence Rogers Fine Art, Santa Monica, CA Northern Lights, Radhus, Tonsberg, Norway
2005! !
Recent Landscapes, Las Fuentes Villa, Carmel Valley, CA State of Being, Municipal Building, Raleigh, NC
2004!
Pan in Arcadia, Lisa Coscino Gallery, Pacific Grove, CA
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS: 2014!
Suggestivism, Copro Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (forthcoming)
2013! ! ! ! !
Risky RisquĂŠ, Long Beach Art Museum, Long Beach, CA (forthcoming) Summer Group Show, Copro Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (forthcoming) Suggestivism: The New Horizon, Rene Museala, Cosenza, Italy (forthcoming) Suggestivism Rome, Mondo Pop, Rome, Italy Surreal Salon, Baton Rouge Gallery for Contemporary Art, Louisiana
2012! ! !
100 Grand, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA Suggestivism NYC, Bold Hype Gallery, New York, NY
2011! !
Suggestivism, Grand Central Art Center, Cal State Fullerton, Santa Ana, CA 100 Grand, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2010! ! !
A History of Flight, Terrence Rogers Fine Art, Santa Monica, CA Empty Time, The Fridge Gallery, Washington, D.C. 100 Artists See Satan, Grand Central Art Center, Cal State Fullerton, Santa Ana, CA
2009! !
The Genesis of Bay Area Figurative Art Now, Art Space 712, San Francisco, CA Kitsch mer unn kunst, Telemarksgaleriet, Nottoden, Norway
2008!
Kitsch Biennale, Pasinger Fabrik, Munich, Germany
2007!
Intimate Landscape, Sesnon Gallery, University of California, Santa Cruz
2006!
All Wet, Lisa Coscino Gallery, Pacific Grove, CA
2005! !
Auto Show, Charles Campbell Gallery, San Francisco, CA My California, National Steinbeck Center, Salinas, CA
2004! !
Art of the Mediterranean Games, Italian Institute of Culture, San Francisco, CA Objects of Obsession, Lisa Coscino Gallery, Pacific Grove, CA
SELECTED TRAVEL AND RESIDENCES: 2013
Morris Graves Foundation. Artist in Residence, Eureka, CA
2012
Morris Graves Foundation. Artist in Residence, Eureka, CA
2010
Monterey Peninsula Yacht Club. Artist in Residence Award, Monterey, CA
2009!
Fine Art Base. May Artist in Residence,, Sand City, CA
2008! ! ! ! 1999!
Fundacia Nakjelska. Late Spring Artist in Residence. Naklo Palace, Poland Jackowo Dolne. Spring Artist Retreat, Poland Vienna. Summer-Winter Studio, Austria Rome. Summer Studio, Italy
SELECTED PRESS: 2013! ! !
Infinite Water. Works and Conversations. Whittaker, Richard. Infinite Water. May 2013 Art Nouveau. Martin, Paley. Flying Planes and Talking Paint. January 9, 2013 MWAH. bb publications. January, 2013 pg. 51
2012! !
The Surfers Journal. Escalante, Greg & Spoor, Nathan. Politics of Paint. vol 21.5, pg. 70-77 Heaven. Art of Elysium, Audi, & Relativity Media. Paper Chase Press. pg. 61
2011! ! ! ! ! ! 2010! ! !
A Long Moment. Van Proyen, Mark. Protean Dreams Monograph. Electric Works, SF. Suggestivism: A Survey of Contemporary Artists. Spoor, Nathan. Berkeley: Ginko Press. pg. 178-179 Odd Nerdrum: Kitsch, More than Art. Tuv, Jan-Ove; Li, Bjorn; and others. September. pg. 314 San Francisco Examiner. Flood, Greg. “A Journey Backʼ - David Molesky at 12 Gallagher.” December 2 Studio Visit Magazine. Boston: Open Studios Press. pg. 134-135 David Molesky, SPUME. Torres, Anthony. San Francisco: ePressBooks. (monograph) New Amercian Paintings: Pacific Coast Edition, #91. Boston: Open Studios Press. pg. 100 - 103 East Bay Express. Cheng, Dewitt. “Ripple Effects.” December 22
2009! ! !
Kitsch: mer enn kunst. Nerdrum, Odd. pg. 314 Juxtapoz Magazine Website. Spoor, Nathan. “David Molesky.” November 2 Juxtapoz Magazine Website. Link to my video “Making Foam.” May 7, 2009
2008!
ISM Magazine. Spoor, Nathan. “Master & Apprentice” Spring issue 14, pg. 12-15
2007!
Southwest Art Magazine. Fauntleroy, Gussie. 21 Under 31. September, pg.135
2006! !
Intimate Landscape. Galuska, Frank. October, p.29 The Monterey County Herald. Watson, Lisa Crawford. “WaterWorks.” March 30-April 5
2005!
Southwest Art Magazine. Gangelhoff, Bonnie. Artists to Watch. September, pg.30
2004!
Monterey County Weekly. Deragon, Rick. “Be Still My Heart.” February, pg.4
2000!
Raleigh Spectator. Bible, Adam. Gallery. September, pg. 6-12
LECTURES: 2013! !
California College of the Arts. Oakland, CA Bay Area Classical Atelier. Burlingame, CA
2012! !
University of California at Berkeley. Advanced Painting Golden Gate Collectors, San Francisco, CA
2010! !
San Francisco Art Institute. Advanced Painting Undergrad and Graduate ODD. ODC Theatre. Pre-dance performance lecture and live painting. San Francisco, CA
2009!
California College of the Arts. Advanced Painting. San Francisco, CA
2007!
Swihart Lecture Series. Santa Monica, CA
1977!
Born in Washington, D.C. - Lives and Works in NYC
David Molesky BIO
David Molesky obtained his BA from UC Berkeley (1999). In 2009, he returned to the US after an 18 month apprenticeship with the painter Odd Nerdrum in Iceland, Norway, and Paris. Molesky始s work has been featured in numerous museum exhibitions including: the Baltimore Museum of Art; Pasinger Fabrik, Munich, Germany; and the Grand Central Art Center, Cal State Fullerton. In 2010, his work was selected for the Pacific Coast Edition of New American Painting. He is featured in this Fall issue of the Surfers始 Journal with an 8 page article. Currently, Molesky is preparing for exhibitions in Long Beach and Santa Monica, CA. Molesky lives and works in the West Village of Manhattan.