Chris Maddox, Derrick Buisch & Dale Kaminski

press release:

Chris Maddox: ≠

Derrick Buisch & Dale Kaminski: Buisch Kaminski Collaborations

Exhibitions on view December 9–December 30, 2017 (Gallery hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11am–3pm. December 26-30: Gallery open by appointment only)

Opening reception on Saturday, December 9 | 6-8pm

Arts + Literature Laboratory (ALL) is pleased to announce two upcoming December exhibitions featuring Madison artists Chris Maddox, Derrick Buisch and Dale Kaminski. ≠ (spoken Antiparallel) by Chris Maddox will be on display in Lab III, and Buisch Kaminski Collaborations by Derrick Buisch and Dale Kaminski will be in Labs I and II beginning December 9, 2017.

Chris Maddox: ≠ (Antiparallel)

Maddox’s show, ≠, pertains to the translation of literature and how meaning and images mutate as they are recorded. The work investigates the various shifts that take place in the rewriting of texts, and the accompanying changes in interpretation that may ensue. Chance, instinct, fortune, regret, escape, and death are themes the exhibition will fold together into an exposition on choice and outcome. This study is built from two versions of The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges: a version translated by Borges’ close creative partner Norman Thomas di Giovanni, and the recent Penguin Classics release, translated by Andrew Hurley. Maddox’s works extract and recombine text fragments from these translations in ways that generate embodiments of the concepts embedded within the writing. A central theme in Maddox’s work, evident even in the title of the story, is the notion that one might imagine a multiplicity of personal existences, each of which expresses a choice made in life that triggered a sequence of events and a particular existence–parallel but unique realities. Such paradoxical antiparallels are mirrored in the text-based works of his project. Antiparallel will explore how paths not taken may linger in the mind and form into persisting and mutating fantasies, ruminations, or narratives of desire and conquest. It will explore the possibility that dreams are constructed entirely from the vapors of roads not taken.

Through his artistic practice, Maddox investigates the motivations and correlations among various forms of contemporary escapist behavior, which he understands as a necessary but often-abused means of identity work. He explores the nature of cultural and geopolitical boundaries, and the thresholds of and barriers to human perception of space and information. He works not in a particular style, but rather bases each solution on the demands of a project’s objective or concept, and leverages his backgrounds in printmaking, drawing and painting, graphic design, photography and advertising, as well as project management, to produce multiple media artwork. His recent work, which culminated in a series of three solo exhibitions titled Beneath the Underdog, Blunder Drawings and Test Me, corresponds to 21st century music culture, crowd-sourcing, graffiti and postmodern conceptions of authorship, appropriation and pastiche.

For more information about Chris Maddox’s work, refer to: www.chrismaddox.com.

Derrick Buisch and Dale Kaminski: Buisch Kaminski Collaborations

Since the summer of 2014, Derrick Buisch and Dale Kaminski have been working on a series of large-scale digital prints combined with painting. Kaminski initiated the project by delivering a set of oversize digitally manipulated photographs to Buisch in his Madison studio. Kaminski’s large-scale prints combine photographs with discrete digital manipulations to create a range of evocative atmospheric scenes; landscapes, abstract patterns and architectural details are all elements of an ongoing body of work. Buisch is overlaying drawings from his own long-term project of a visual index – a collection of scribbles/doodles, drawn linear abstractions. The Buisch index is projected and painted on top of the Kaminski prints. Buisch Kaminski Collaborations reveals an unexpected cohesion between Kaminki’s images extracted from real life, and Buish’s playful addition, utilizing brightly colored lines. The resulting effect creates an emphasis on the illusory depth that exists between the painted designs in the forefront of each piece and the distinct image behind. The two seemingly dissimilar aesthetics, resulting from the separate mediums, blend together in this collaboration. This exhibition will be the culmination of a two-year project and the first time a large body of work from this project will be available for public display.

A painting professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1997, Derrick Buisch has exhibited in many national and regional museum exhibitions. As a self-described “Painter,” Buisch consistently seeks out new ways to experiment within the narrow avenues of paint on canvas. Certain marks, signs, scribbles, and gestures are repeated by means of projection, stencils, and transfers. A vocabulary of visual chatter celebrates the distortions, interruptions and interference within the painted surface. These works are very straightforward, taking on subjects like imaginary monsters and fantastic buildings. The blunt, naïve nature of the subjects serves as an easy foil/mask, allowing for a range of rich experimentation with paint chemistry, color, installations and scale. The physical properties of the medium are constantly stressed, questioned, tweaked and recalibrated to keep the working visual vocabulary fresh and inventive.

Dale Kaminski (MFA UW-Madison 2012) is an artist that works with all forms of new technology. His interests are focused on the ways we can use technology communally to facilitate better interpersonal relations. His work has appeared in local, regional, national, international and intergalactic art shows and performance venues most recently at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia. Dale is the director of the Arts Media Center at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater campus where he directs many interdisciplinary projects that focus on the collaborative use of technology.

For more information about this collaborative show, refer to: https://www.pinterest.com/derrickbuisch/buisch-kaminski-collaborations/