DENNIS LEE
MITCHELL
10 DECEMBER 2021 — 30 JANUARY 2022
DENNIS LEE
MITCHELL INFINITE MUSINGS
TAYLOE PIGGOTT GALLERY
Image of Dennis Lee Mitchell working in Instanbul, Turkey
DENNIS LEE MITCHELL e s s ay : a w r i n k le i n t i me “We do not know what things look like. We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing.” - Madeleine l’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
In 1962, Ad Reinhardt argued, “The one object of fifty years of abstract art is to present art-as-art and as nothing else…making it…more absolute and more exclusive—non-objective, non-representational, non-figurative, nonimagist, non-expressionist, non-subjective.” Nearly sixty years later, Dennis Lee Mitchell takes this painter’s ethos to a new and dizzying height by obliterating paint altogether to work with smoke, a completely immaterial medium. Infinite Musings presents works on paper and a singular small canvas rendered black with smoke. Utilizing acetylene torches, Dennis Lee Mitchell creates surreal worlds into which we travel willingly, our eye leading the way. One work draws us into its depths in undulating ropelike layers of velvety black tumbled upon one another, the next appears like a far-off galaxy, perhaps a wrinkle in time encapsulated in smoke. “I draw with smoke as a way to render images of mutability. The result is a symbolic condensation from beginning to end, apotheosizing the smoke,” Mitchell says.
As an undergrad, Dennis Lee Mitchell found himself frustrated with the properties of paint. “I would put the paint on and I’d always look at the paint and say, well, nothing’s happening; it’s just sitting there.” Time and materiality were not lending him the clarity of voice he sought. “I knew I wanted to use heat. I wanted to use something in transition as I did my work.” First, he discovered ceramics. “I could just weld the clay together [with acetylene torches]. I loved it, because it was right there, real fast, and one day, there was cheap paper next to me and I put the torch to it […] and I was totally taken by that.” Each work on paper involves nearly 30-40 experimental proofs before the artist is satisfied. To achieve deep black requires about 20 or so layers of smoke. The paper is heated with an oxidized torch, resulting in 6
the feeling of infinite depth underlying each work in this exhibition. The work on canvas has been a long time coming and is an achievement of painstaking attention and manipulation of media. The canvas is not burned in the method of Alberto Burri and his Arte Povera compatriots, but in fact coated effectively with smoke. Mitchell clearly relishes in the intellectual challenge of attempting the impossible. “Most of this work I do is always on the edge of materiality. […] In the past, I would make things and it always seemed like the work I did [that I liked] was on the fringe of being there. They’re almost not there.” The seductive void of the black work both flirts with Reinhardt’s tenet of art-as-art and presents something entirely intangible, beyond the “limiting thing.” Dennis Lee Mitchell lives and works in the D.C. area and is a 2016-2017 recipient of a Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grant. Mitchell has exhibited extensively both domestically and abroad, with numerous solo exhibitions
across the country over the past few years. Mitchell’s work has been critically reviewed in the Denver Art Review, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun and Chicago Art Magazine, and has been the subject of scholarly essays by Donald Kuspit, H. Peter Seeves, Victor M. Cassidy and Paul Klein. Mitchell’s work is in the permanent collection of the Illinois State Art Museum, Chicago, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City. the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam and the Thrivent Art Collection.
Reflection 2, 2017, Smoke on paper, 59 x 59 inches
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Untitled (4), 2021 Multilayers of smoke on paper 18 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches
Detail of Untitled (4)
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Untitled (18), 2021 Smoke on canvas 33 x 39 inches
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Smoke on Smoke, 2019 Smoke on paper 32 1/2 x 32 1/2 inches
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Smoke on Smoke, 2021 Smoke on paper 17 x 15 1/2 inches
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Untitled (721), 2021 Smoke and colored smoke on paper 24 1/2 x 20 1/2 inches
Detail of Untitled (721)
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Untitled, 2021 Smoke on paper 26 1/2 x 24 inches
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Smoke on Smoke, 2020 Smoke on paper 44 x 56 inches
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Adham, 2021 Smoke on paper 26 x 27 inches
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Untitled (void), 2021 Smoke on canvas 12 x 12 inches
Detail of Untitled (void)
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Untitled, 2021 Smoke on paper 33 1/2 x 33 1/2 inches
Detail of Untitled
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Westwater, 2021 Smoke on paper 25 1/4 x 30 3/4 inches
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Folded/Unfolded, 2017 Smoke on paper 62 x 42 inches
Detail of Folded/Unfolded
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Untitled (48.3), 2019 Smoke on paper 68 x 68 inches
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Reflection 1, 2017 Smoke on paper 59 x 59 inches
Detail of Reflection 1
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Reflection 2, 2017 Smoke on paper 59 x 59 inches
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Untitled (9.0), 2019 Smoke on paper 45 x 45 inches
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Untitled (45.5), 2020 Smoke on paper 35 x 35 inches
Detail of Untitled (121.5)
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Untitled (121.5), 2020 Smoke on paper 44 x 44 inches
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Infinite, 2012 Smoke on paper Each image 12 x 12 inches (sold as set of 9)
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Infinite, 2012 Smoke on paper Each image 12 x 12 inches (sold as set of 9)
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Infinite, 2012 Smoke on paper Each image 12 x 12 inches (sold as set of 9)
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Infinite, 2012 Smoke on paper Each image 12 x 12 inches (sold as set of 9)
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Finite #1 (top), 2018 Finite #2 (bottom), 2018 Smoke on paper 12 x 12 inches (top and bottom images)
“We do not know what things look like. We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing.” - Madeleine l’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Published on the occasion of the exhibition INFINITE MUSINGS by DENNIS LEE MITCHELL © TAYLOE PIGGOTT GALLERY 2021
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