OCTOBER 2 – NOVEMBER 1 | Chris Dorosz | Tiergarten
Exhibition Info | Exhibition Images | Video
Scott Richards Contemporary Art presents TIERGARTEN, a new series of uniquely fabricated two- and three-dimensional works by Chris Dorosz. A cocktail reception for the artist will take place on Thursday, October 2, 5:30–7:30 pm. The exhibition continues through November 1.
“What would the true nature of reality look like if it was stripped of its narrative and we could understand everything that made up the matter of things all at once?”
This is a question that might have been posed by a physicist, engineer or biologist, but instead it is how Chris Dorosz approaches his latest area of artistic exploration: “Through the process of reduction and layering
Dorosz has always been interested in deconstructing visual imagery into elemental units, and reassembling it in a way that challenges our visual assumptions. He is well known for his three-dimensional, wall-mounted figure groupings, which are created by constructing a grid of clear nylon rods suspended vertically within a Plexiglas framework, to which multiple drops of paint are meticulously applied. The clusters of paint drops form figures that materialize, floating in space, and interact in a way that is reminiscent of actors on a stage.
In Tiergarten Dorosz presents his ubiquitous small scale sculptural vignettes alongside a series of paintings and two site specific installations based on just one image from Berlin’s city park, the Tiergaren. The large-scale constructions are an incredible undertaking. With thousands of drops of paint clinging to a floor-to-ceiling forest of vertically strung monofilament, resulting in abstracted shapes of the original landscape which seem to fracture apart and re-form as the viewer walks around them. The accompanying paintings present the Tiergarten image from different points of view, with layers of dots of paint applied to each canvas surface using hole-punched templates.
Steven Matijcio, in his 2008 essay for the large-scale The Painted Room exhibition at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, wrote, “Like the apparitions floating in and out of legibility, we come to mirror the ethereal hand of Dorosz in The Painted Room – moving fluidly between absence and presence, abstraction and representation, coherence and chaos.”
Born in Canada, where he earned his master’s degree at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Chris Dorosz now makes his home in San Francisco. His work has been exhibited widely in Canada and in the Bay Area, including a solo exhibition at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art. He has been featured in Elle magazine and Canadian Art Magazine, among other publications. This is his second solo exhibition at Scott Richards Contemporary Art.