Chris Trueman's paintings excite me! There is a wonderful quote by Joan Miro about the artistic freedom that would ultimately arise from the extensive visual vocabulary established throughout modernist history. Miro predicted that the isolated genres of painting that existed throughout modernism would eventually be manipulated and fused together. The artist would become a true alchemist, free to mix styles and invent something totally new all over again.
If there is one artist who epitomizes the fruition of this freedom it is Chris Trueman. His work hybridizes styles and genres of painting to create works that push the medium into new territories. Abstract painting is becoming fresh again and it's artists like Chris Trueman who are reinventing the wheel.
This month opening October 23 we will be exhibiting a series of Chris' paintings in an exhibition titled A L C H E M Y. We sat down with Chris and had a chat about the work and his responses are as eloquent and intriguing as the paintings themselves.
TWFA: There seems to be a real respect for the physical surface of the canvas in your paintings. In many cases the canvas is left exposed in the finished piece, your marks collaborating with the raw surface and working with it rather than imposing themselves entirely upon it. I am very drawn to that element of your work and I’m curious as to your thoughts on the ‘surface’ when it comes to making a painting?
CT: In the AUG series, (which "Big Single" and DD are a part of) there was a focus on how the painting functions as an image and how it functions as an object. Big Single is a good example because the image that is created in the painting is a big stroke floating in an ambient atmosphere of color, as though you had zoomed in on an area of a much larger painting. But the big stroke isn't made out of smaller strokes, it IS the big stroke visually and physically. So I have narrowed the gap between what the stroke actually is and what it is representing. In this way making Big Single was quite a risky painting, because I wasn't building the stroke out of smaller strokes, I had one shot at it I put down a gallon or so of paint and went for it. As I moved forward In my series I discovered that I could maintain that connection to the materiality by leaving areas of exposed raw canvas. The weave and texture of the canvas itself provides a connection to the materiality of the object while other parts of the painting create illusions of space and depth. The paintings never function completely as an object nor as an illusion, they vacillate between the two.
TWFA: Your paintings could be described as visually complex, yet there is still breathing room for the viewer within the complexity. Do you feel a conscious battle going on when you are making the painting to avoid overworking the surface?
CT: I subscribe to the notion that each painting has its own identity, some come together seemingly effortlessly, some evolve into complex multi-layered dense compositions. Each painting presents a puzzle or problem that has to be resolved on its own terms. Sometimes I end up with paintings that don't fit into the linear sequentiality of series based work. In this case the piece circles back to ideas that are still kicking around in my head or takes a tangent of something that has been percolating in the background somewhere. In these cases rather than force it into conforming to the series I let the painting be what it is and move onto the next.
TWFA: Different periods and modernist styles from within art history get fused together in your paintings to create fresh new hybrids. I know from reading about your work that this dialogue with art history is a big part of the content of your paintings. Who have been your biggest inspirations throughout art history?
CT: The dialogue about art history in my work is about how when these previously isolated practices and philosophies are fused a third entity emerges. In an analogy its like how mixing the gene pool creates a a stronger population whereas too small of a gene pool has been known to create problems over time. Philosophies have to evolve and take into consideration new developments and address the internal problems that have been exposed. Part of the evolution is to break down the barriers that separate these diverse philosophies and take parts from each to build a more resilient more flexible, more fluid, more encompassing philosophy. How that translates to the formal dialogue in my work comes down to whether or not there is more generative potential through fusing styles than there was by leaving them isolated or even in juxtaposition.
Some of my favorite practitioners that I draw from are the abstract expressionist painters Joan Mitchell, Phillip Guston, Mark Rothko, hard edged painters Karl Benjamin, Frederick Hammersley. Op artists Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely.
[caption id="attachment_11920" align="alignleft" width="286"]
Frederick Hammersley[/caption]
TWFA: The line work in your paintings has evolved to be more dynamic and not as rigid in your newer paintings, which in turn creates an undulating, wave like quality to the later work. The paintings hum as a result and I’m reminded of the paintings of Charles Burchfield, particularly his interest in visually describing sound. Is that something that you are interested in or how would you describe the use of line in your work?
CT: I'm not as interested in describing sound as much as mapping space and creating a space that appears to operate in 3d at the same time as layers of semitransparent screens. Screen space like you would see on your computer or phone where layers of flat information are stacked. How we prioritize and read those spaces is interesting to me.
TWFA: There has been quite an evolution from the paintings done before to now. Obviously the earlier work is informing the later and I’m curious as to where you feel the work is heading now?
I tend to see my work moving forward as a herd not so much as a one-to-one but I have recently introduced dot patterns which are actually the negative space between two sets of parallel lines. In this way more of the underlying layer is exposed but the dots keep you from being able to focus on it. I like the idea of a painting that is evasive of being viewed.
DATE: OCTOBER 9, 2014.
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