Matthew Dibble works exhibited at two Cleveland galleries: Art Matters
by Steven Litt / Plain Dealer Art Critic
Wednesday August 19, 2009, 3:37 PM

Courtesy of Matthew Dibble- Artist Matthew Dibble made "Together With Moths" and other paintings in his new show at Asterisk Gallery by projecting photographs of small sketches onto a large canvas and then adding areas of color and drawings of objects such as the chair to create the final image.
Every artist plays a game in which he or she alone makes the rules. But what happens when the rules are so loose that anything goes?
That question is raised by two exhibitions of work by Lakewood artist Matthew Dibble, at Tregoning & Co. in Cleveland s Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood and at Asterisk Gallery in Tremont.
Dibble, 52, a native of Euclid who trained at the Cooper School of Art in Cleveland from 1975 to 1978, has oceans of energy and a great deal of visual intelligence.

But while filling yards of canvas, he has also veered in a variety of directions in ways not justified by quality in each case.
In the Tregoning show, Dibble is displaying three types of work from the past decade.
REVIEWS
Tregoning & Co. / Asterisk Gallery What: Two simultaneous exhibitions of work by Lakewood artist Matthew Dibble.
When: Through Wednesday, Sept. 30, at Tregoning; through Saturday, Sept. 5, at Asterisk.
Where: Tregoning: 1300 West 78th St., Cleveland; Asterisk: 2393 Profes sor St., Cleveland.
Admission: Free. Call 216-281-8626 for Tregoning or 330-304-8528 for Asterisk.
First, there are heavily painted but flaccid abstractions that weakly echo paintings by Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning. Second, there are several colorful and thinly painted abstractions that have a semi-Cubist look. Finally, there is a selection of large, cartoonish images of grotesque, imaginary creatures floating in shallow visual fields pressed close up against the picture plane.
As Dibble explains in an artists statement: These acts of painting helped me become more related to my inner world.
It s great that the paintings give Dibble satisfaction, but the lack of rigor, especially in the thickly painted abstractions, suggests that at times, the artist values quantity over quality.
The best paintings in the Tregoning show are the colorful, semi-Cubist images, in which the artist combines linear patterns with dryly brushed patches of color to create visual effects akin to stained glass. Unfortunately, these works are in the minority.
In the Asterisk show, Dibble is exhibiting 14 large canvases and 10 drawings in which he makes a definitive choice of direction: All the works are done in the artist s cartoolike mode, with bizarre, imaginary creatures lurking comically amid basement appliances such as a hot-water heater and a utility sink.
The pictures are constructed in a smart, efficient, no-nonsense way, with great economy of effort. They communicate Dibble’s main message, which is to suggest mental phantasms that seem to creep through the basement of the mind.
Here, though, Dibble’s work would be stronger if he could add clarity and finesse to his drawing, which tends to look rote and repetitive. His humanoid creatures have noses and eyes, but instead of hands or feet, they have flippers or stumps.
Could it be that fingers and toes are simply too hard to draw?
If Dibble toughened the rules of his game and truly focused on a direction that meant the most to him he might win greater satisfaction and a larger audience.