Above, Below, Within: Matt Dibble at Arts Collinwood-Preview from Giraffe Trap Magazine Issue 2

Matt Dibble’s fast-paced abstract paintings, displayed this past month at Arts Collinwood Gallery in an exhibit titled “Hope for the Picture Guild,” are all about the precarious thrill of physical movement through space, and the dissolution of form that flickers at the edge of vision. Curated by University of Akron professor Del Ray Loven, the exhibit concentrates on recent works by Dibble that take the action-packed gestural repertoire of 1950’s Abstract Expressionism as their point of departure. Willem DeKooning’s virtuoso deconstructed landscapes are the main precursors of Dibble’s works here, and Hans Hoffman’s influential experiments in visual layering, but the similarities can be misleading. The moves look much the same, but add up to a more introspective vision -- one that is still painterly, yet gives a postmodern account of randomness. Dibble’s hard-working manner and often unpretentious scale emphasizes the perspiration part of painterly genius. At the same time, this is a show notable for its profoundly quiet intelligence, grounded in the background noise of visual commonplaces. Far from merely revisiting an older style, Dibble provides entirely contemporary comments on both the art historical moment he remembers, and the way things have changed over the past half century. Dibble’s works reflect on the gathering speed and complexity of the present moment, and the way that personal decisions delineate change. “Knoxville Embalmed” (2008), a roughly two foot square canvas, makes the looming, slashing liberties of a vintage DeKooning seem almost claustrophobic. Deep, distance-like pockets yawn behind deftly entwined marks and strokes, as the eye is alternately coaxed and rushed into a hybrid pictorial space. Dibble’s pale paint has a sun-bleached look, tightly packed on the surface like trash clumped in a cul-de-sac. Scrape marks and brush strokes shove or drag, pushing and pulling against each other. Half-buried rectangles are spread patch-like here and there, like trowelled adhesive cement. In “On Island McGee,” they’re stretched and pulled and twisted upwards. The images that emerge from these actions could be buildings and trees, water and sky – but felt more than seen. Dibble’s textures and combinations are terribly intimate, their rough and smooth passages brought up against the eye. They promise sensation, as if on the brink of sounding, tasting, and smelling. In a statement accompanying the exhibit Del Ray Loven talks about Willem DeKooning. “He said that when he was standing upright and secure on two feet, he didn’t feel like he was getting it right, but when he started to slip, just for a moment before he fell, he’d have a glimpse of the reality he wanted to paint.” Dibble’s paintings are vertiginous by the standards of ordinary vision; the “view” is looking at us. Dibble says of this current series, “Sometimes I felt I was inside and behind the painting, working my way out.” He also mentions an old adage that adds three more points to the usual compass: above, within, and below. The paintings at “Hope for the Picture Guild” find their subjects inside the skin of daily experience, rubbing along the underside of familiar scenes as they mix inner and outer perspectives.

Douglas Max Utter
http://www.douglasutter.com/dibblereviewforgt2.html

October 13th 2010

Matt Dibble at Arts Collinwood : Sept. 17th through Oct 16th 2010

“Hope for the Picture Guild” is the title of Matt’s latest show which opened Friday September 17 at the Arts Collinwood Gallery www.artscollinwood.org on Cleveland’s east side and is appropriately named as the show itself seems to be a counterpunch to the Postmodernist assertion that painting is dead.

The show consists of 17 abstract works on canvas selected from the artist’s recent body of work by Del Rey Loven, painting professor at the University of Akron, who served as a kind of curator for the venue. The space at Arts Collinwood provided a perfect setting for this show as the atmosphere of the neighborhood served as the ideal backdrop for Matt’s work. As one approaches the gallery from the street, you feel as if you could very well be in New York in the late 40’s and 50’s as the bold, gutsy paintings by Dibble are evident in this gritty but efficient space.

The first painting that grabs your attention from its position on the street-facing wall is a large black and white 70x76 inch oil on canvas titled, “Bachelors Still Asleep.” Its spontaneous strokes of black over a white background immediately recall the work of Franz Kline. However, Dibble is not imitating Kline here. There seems to be a hidden order of repetitive pattern that the viewer is invited to solve. It is kind of like those aptitude tests where you are given a series of three numbers, discern the pattern, and come up with the next number in the sequence.

Canvases of various sizes are hung well and the show comes together in a comprehensive, purposeful manner. Loven has done an excellent job here and this body of work speaks to a definite thesis. The larger works seem to be more successful than the smaller ones, and perhaps the strongest two are the 72”x84” “Penchant for Dueling” and the 80”x80” “Frowning Alpine”, both oils on canvas. Both works are aggressive multi-layered, multi-colored abstracts which are respectful nods to the patron saint of AbEx painting, Willem Dekooning. The scraps of newspaper impregnated into the paint works like a signature to those familiar with the nitty-gritty of DeKooning’s work. Although his gestures are bold, Dibble’s colors are of a soft muted key and are very carefully controlled to be just unsettling enough to eschew decoration.

As you move through the exhibition and begin to digest these paintings, Dibble’s brilliance becomes more evident. It hits you square in the eyes. These works are not nostalgic imitations pulled from the by-gone era of abstract expressionism, but relevant and valid ideas that resonate today. It is clear from the vibe on the streets of the historic Collinwood neighborhood: the bohemians strolling along the sidewalks, the DJ setting up on the corner, the street musicians, and the funky shops. This is work of the here and now. Painting is not dead. Dibble’s show at Arts Collinwood challenges the Postmodernism notion that you must tear down the past in order to create something new. “Hope for the Picture Guild” articulates nicely that we are not done learning from the past and offers an inside joke to those that are listening.

By Bill Chill www.williamchill.com

The space is surprisingly well suited for the paintings. Del Ray curated a very good show here, well balanced to the room, with each work to the others.
It is also very well installed.
William Tregoning- Art Dealer
www.tregoningandco.com

Matt's paintings are gutsy. He has a firm understanding of underlying structure--his instincts in regard to composition, color and application place him in very select company. This is a powerful exhibition of top-tier work.
Ross Lesko- Director, Kenneth Paul Lesko Gallery
www.kennethpaullesko.com

Matt Dibble gets his work to come to life in the painting process. He creates space there, in the paintings, that’s all it’s own … Dibble puts color upon color, shape upon shape in a manner that is both first rate craftsmanship and high-risk aesthetic adventurism. I selected these paintings because they represent Matt at the top of his game.”
Professor Del Rey Loven-Mary Schiller Myers School of Art.

New Abstract Paintings by Matthew Dibble to Debut

NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CLEVELAND — August 30, 2010 — On Friday, September 17, Arts Collinwood Gallery will showcase recent abstract paintings from Cleveland artist Matthew Dibble in a solo exhibition titled “Hope for the Picture Guild.” The paintings will be on display through October 17.

For this show, works were selected by Del Rey Loven, Director, Mary Schiller Myers School of Art, Akron University.

Loven explains, “Matt Dibble gets his work to come to life in the painting process. He creates space there, in the paintings, that’s all it’s own … Dibble puts color upon color, shape upon shape in a manner that is both first rate craftsmanship and high-risk aesthetic adventurism. I selected these paintings because they represent Matt at the top of his game.”

Steven Litt, winner of the 2010 Cleveland Arts Prize and critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, commented in a recent review, “Dibble has oceans of energy and a great deal of visual intelligence.”

French collector and critic Christian Schmitt (www.espacetrevisse.com), said of Dibble’s abstract work, “Painter of the absolute, M. Dibble requires that art reveal to him the absolute of being. This is why his abstracts are ravaged by an abundance of impulses. The massiveness, debauchery and violence of the brush strokes seem to violently provoke the paint so that the hidden, the unsaid, is unveiled.”

Douglas Max Utter, noted Cleveland artist, critic, and editor of e-zine Giraffe Trap (www.giraffetrap.com), commented, “For a painter’s painter like Dibble, versed in the tensions of modernist work from Cezanne to DeKooning, the central activity of his art is to choreograph an ever more intense dance involving these two eternally incompatible partners [drawing and painting].”

Dibble’s work has been exhibited at various venues such as the Cleveland Museum of Art, www.tregoningandco.com S.P.A.C.E.S., and the Butler Institute of American Art. His paintings and drawings reside in private and corporate collections in the U.S. and France.

Arts Collinwood is located at 15601 Waterloo Rd. in the Collinwood neighborhood of Cleveland. For more information, visit www.artscollinwood.org. For more information on Matthew Dibble, please visit www.dibblepaintings.com.


Media Contact

Michelle Maniscalco
m.maniscalco@sbcglobal.net
216-401-8677

Dibble Construction,LLC- Receives Better Business Bureau Accreditation

For Immediate Release – Date 8-17- 2010

Dibble Construction,LLC announced today that it has received Better Business Bureau (BBB) accreditation.

"Accreditation is an honor – many businesses are not eligible," said David Weiss, BBB president. "Businesses that meet our high standards are invited to apply for accreditation. Applicants undergo a review process and ultimate approval by our Board of Directors."

Businesses seeking BBB accreditation must commit to the BBB Code of Business Practices. The Code is a comprehensive set of policies, procedures and best practices on how businesses treat consumers. These standards call for building trust, embodying integrity, advertising honestly and telling the truth, being transparent, honoring promises, being responsive and safeguarding privacy.

BBB was founded in 1912 with a mission of fostering a fair marketplace and continues to be a resource for the public, providing objective, unbiased information about businesses. Reports on over three million businesses and charities are available at cleveland.bbb.org. A key piece of information that helps consumers make informed decisions is whether a company is BBB accredited. According to BBB, seven of 10 consumers say they are more likely to buy from a company designated as a BBB Accredited Business.

"We are proud to be a BBB Accredited Business," said Matt Dibble "It signifies our commitment to customer service, reliability and trust. For any organization to excel in today's environment, it is critical that they be fully committed to excellence. Our acknowledgment by the BBB aligns with and supports our efforts of providing superior service in the marketplace."

Hope For The Picture Guild: Del Rey Loven on Matt Dibble

Professor Del Rey Loven talks about his selections for my up coming show at www.artscollinwood.org opening September 17th 2010

The year is 2010. This is the year Dennis Hopper died. Dennis Hopper was a damn good abstract painter and post-modernist artist. He came out of the abstract expressionist, pop-art era, but was known as an actor. He called himself a painter, who acted for a living.

Matt Dibble is an artist, both post-modern and abstract, who does roofing for a living. Thankfully Matt is not known for his roofing, he’s known for his painting, and he’s a damn good artist.

Jackson Pollock said: “A painting has a life, let the painting live.” In those monumental pictures that Pollock made, he created a space, and noted art critic Robert Hughes said these paintings were akin to the monumental landscapes of the American West. Hughes said, “It’s like a space you can move into.”

Matt Dibble gets his work to come to life in the painting process. He creates space in the paintings that’s all it’s own.

Willem De Kooning said that when he was standing upright and secure on two feet, he didn’t feel like he was getting it right, but when he started to slip, for just a moment before he fell, he’d have a glimpse at the reality he wanted to paint. He called himself a slipping glimpser.

Sometimes, in Matt’s studio (the aesthetic roof he has created) when you look at the paintings, such a dynamic space is created, you can just see the artist slipping on that steep pitch, tumbling into the magnificent, violent, exulted and indescribable space.

It’s been said the aesthetic experience is an ineffable one. You can’t fully put it into words what you experience when you see a Matt Dibble painting. There is so much going on.

He is a man who knows his medium. Every bit as a roofer knows how to put one shingle down on another, Dibble puts color upon color, shape upon shape in workmanlike manner that is both first rate craftsmanship and high-risk aesthetic adventurism. I selected these paintings because they represent Matt at the top of his game.

Del Rey Loven-recorded August 10th 2010

Del Rey Loven's paintings have been exhibited in numerous American venues, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Butler Institute of American Art, the Minnesota Museum of Art, and the Louis Meisel Gallery, New York City. His work as an educator has been driven by the question, "What will be the role of the creative person in twenty-first century society?", and guided by the conviction that "when there is a creative gift, there will be a place of service." This has led him to research and develop academic programs in Art, Visual Communications, and Architecture. The Bauhaus model of integrating academic studies in Art, Architecture, Craft, Design and Industry has been a longtime inspiration.

Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland Releases Design for New Building.

CLEVELAND, OH.- The Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA) today released the design for its new facility, following its presentation and approval at a meeting of the City Planning Commission. The project is designed by the internationally acclaimed firm Foreign Office Architects (FOA), London. The Museum anticipates that it will break ground for the $26.3 million project in fall/winter 2010.

The nearly 34,000-square-foot, four-story structure is FOA’s first major building in the United States and its first museum. It will provide MOCA with street presence for the first time in its forty-plus-year history, and will enable it to present a diversity of innovative exhibitions and programs, while appealing to both current and new audiences. At the same time, it will give the city of Cleveland and its cultural community a signature building for contemporary art and ideas.

Located at the intersection of Euclid Avenue and Mayfield Road, the new MOCA is a flagship project of Cleveland’s emerging Uptown district, a major urban revitalization project undertaken by Case Western Reserve University; developer MRN, Ltd.; and other institutions in the University Circle neighborhood. The Museum will serve as a catalyst for creativity and growth in the area—which is home to one of the country’s largest concentrations of cultural, educational, and medical institutions—with greatly expanded educational and public programs, as well as imaginative collaborations with neighboring organizations and cultural partners.

MOCA Director Jill Snyder says, “The Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland is elated that the design for its new building has been approved by the City Planning Commission. This represents an endorsement of FOA’s inspired building-design and a recognition of the critical importance of MOCA to the cultural life of the city. FOA’s design for our building is the perfect expression of our program—one that will not only enable us to operate at the highest level, but that will also be beautiful, intriguing, and sensitive to our urban surroundings and community. The Museum’s ability to realize this project during a period of economic instability is a clear testament to the vision and dedication of MOCA’s Board leadership and community funders.”

Farshid Moussavi, principal of FOA, adds, “As FOA’s first museum and first U.S. commission, this is an especially meaningful and inspirational project for us. Museums today are not just homes for art, but serve multiple functions and host a variety of activities. Our design for MOCA Cleveland aims to provide visitors with a museum that is a dynamic public space in which to experience contemporary art in its infinite manifestations.”

In addition to Foreign Office Architects, the design team for the new Museum includes executive architects Westlake Reed Leskosky, headquartered in Cleveland and designers of more than fifty cultural buildings throughout the United States.

Building Design
The new MOCA, which will be forty-four percent larger than the Museum’s current, leased facility, will demonstrate that a museum expansion need not be large in scale to be ambitious in all respects. Devised for both environmental and fiscal sustainability, the design for the four-story building is at once technically inventive, visually stunning, and highly practical.

FOA has responded ingeniously to the project’s roughly triangular site by designing a building with a hexagonal base that, with imperceptible changes in the shape of each story, rises to a square roof. Viewed from the exterior, the building will appear as an inventive massing of six geometric facets, some flat, others sloping at various angles, all coming together to create a powerful abstract form.

Clad primarily in mirror-finish black Rimex stainless steel, the façade of the new MOCA will reflect its urban surroundings, changing in appearance with differences in light and weather. Window glazing will be tinted to assimilate with the reflective skin so that during the day the building will read as a unified volume, while at night interior lights will create a dynamic pattern on the dark surface.

Three of the building’s six facets, one of them clad in transparent glass, will flank a public plaza. This will provide a public gathering place and also serve as MOCA’s “front yard,” and will be the setting for seasonal programming. From here, visitors and passersby may look through the transparent facet, site of the Museum entrance, into the ground floor, a space intended for socializing and for civic and cultural events.

While the building’s dark exterior will offer almost no hint of the interior massing and structure, the experience inside will be notably transparent. Upon entering MOCA, visitors will find themselves in an atrium from which they may visually grasp the dynamic shape and structure of the building as it rises. This space will lead in turn to the Museum’s lobby, café, and shop, and to a double-height multipurpose room that will house public programs and other events. From here, visitors may take the Museum’s staircase—itself a monumental sculptural object or an elevator to the upper floors.

Because MOCA is a non-collecting institution—one of the few such contemporary art museums in the country—its new building does not need to accommodate collection galleries. In order to achieve maximum flexibility for the museum’s diverse exhibitions, the main gallery has been sited at the top of the building. There it will be structurally unencumbered, needing only to hold the lightweight roof, the underside of which will be fully visible from the gallery. Moveable walls will enable the 6,000-square-foot space to be divided into a variety of configurations. This floor will also contain a gallery designed specifically for new-media work and a lounge with a view of the city, where visitors can relax, reflect on what they have seen, and read about the exhibitions.

Ms. Snyder notes, “As Cleveland’s only museum of contemporary art, MOCA is committed to presenting exhibitions that break new ground, showing the work of emerging artists from across the globe as well as from our own region. Flexibility is key to a program that, like ours, embraces aesthetic, conceptual, and cultural diversity, and displays works in a great variety of mediums and genres. We are thrilled with the gallery space planned for the new Museum.”

While the main exhibition gallery is on the top floor, all four floors of the Museum contain space for either exhibitions or public programs, with the second and third floors combining public and “back of house” functions. The second floor, for example, will house both exhibition workshops and a 1,500-square-foot public gallery, to be used for more intimately scaled exhibitions; consonant with the openness that is characteristic of the building’s interior, visitors approaching this gallery by stair will also be able to glimpse the workshops. The third floor, home to MOCA’s administrative offices, will also include spaces for classes, lectures, and other educational programs.

In keeping with the ways in which contemporary visitors engage with art, the new building will have wi-fi throughout, enabling the use of wireless devices for on demand learning. MOCA anticipates that the building will receive LEED silver accreditation.

PIG IRON by Matthew Dibble- Review by Christian Schmitt

Matthew Dibble started painting relatively late in life, despite having always drawn since age 13. He began drawing using India ink and has remained fascinated by this dark liquid.
Later, he tried several times to take up painting; however, he often found it too demanding and eventually went back to drawing.
He felt that what he depicted in his small drawings were often times more intense and profound that what he could portray in his large canvases. And it was only recently that he felt truly capable of transposing his greatest aspirations to large paintings.
Furthermore, his early canvases often covered themes and images from mythology that he had already elaborately developed in his drawings.
Now, with the painting “Pig Iron” and others from 2008, Matthew Dibble seems to mark the start of a new turning point in his work leading him to completely abstract paintings. This painting is surprising due to the abundance of paint and violence exhibited. Paint constantly pummeled and lacerated by the painter and which sadly shows a wounded and devastated world.
In doing so, Matthew Dibble returns to the school of abstract expressionism, which has had a strong presence in American painting since World War II.
In fact, the new direction that he has taken surprisingly resembles that of Rothko who, in 1946, with a new series of paintings called Multiforms, would also develop an abstract language in his paintings. He has also previously lived through a period marked by mythological themes.
The same Rothko started out painting shapes like organs giving as a pretext that “my art is not abstract; it lives and breathes.” Furthermore, “…Any picture which does not provide the environment in which the breath of life can be drawn does not interest me.”
De Kooning himself also excelled in abstraction. Even after the war, he quite often continued to mix abstraction and figuration; however, in the 1950s, he would firmly turn to abstract and gestural painting with large brush strokes resembling gestures of liberation.
In this school of abstract painting in the U.S., Jackson Pollock must not be forgotten. Pollock, however, distinguishes himself by action painting, by gestural painting which primarily characterizes his work. Far from being only a technique, gestural painting allows the painter’s work to be objectified.
“Dripping” allowed him to resolve the antinomy between the color and stroke, to unite form and color, drawing and painting in the same spreading gesture. In short, thanks to this method, Pollock’s painting is becoming spontaneously one.
However, none of this is present in Matthew Dibbles work, because if the “Pig Iron” painting is indeed a part of the sphere of influence of abstract expressionism as previously described, it cannot be connected to Action Painting.
Loaded with an overwhelming number of impulses, this work remains in fact decisively abstract due to its torturous look. But since the painter still uses a brush or some other instrument that he applies directly to the canvas, there is no objectification like there is in Pollock’s painting.
This is a dark painting, having generous amounts of pigments distributed with aggressive brush strokes of heavy, violent colors. It is slashed everywhere with large zigzagging, crisscrossing brush strokes.
You can also see large knife strokes, from the spatula or the brush which notably lead to the creation of a deep gap in the middle of the painting and numerous areas of flat tints.
The spatula or knife at times brutally slashes the canvas, skinning it alive and even depriving it of its substance. In certain areas (at the top and bottom of the painting), it is at times literally decimated.
The result of this violence leads to the creation of pockets of paint appearing here and there resembling piles of snow appearing, which once dry creates a sort of tumulus or crater. All these sporadic heaps of paint give birth to the surface of the canvas similar to the surface of the moon.
The title “Pig Iron” which can be translated into French by the melting obtained by fusing iron ore in blast-furnaces justifies the particular painting techniques used in this canvas. Cleveland, the city where the painter lives, was an important industrial centre up until the second half of the twentieth century before undergoing a restructuring into the financial and insurance sectors.
Matthew Dibble thus lived a large part of his life surrounded by this heavy industry and by the intense activity of the blast-furnaces, steel mills and rolling mills that were part of his daily setting. All this must have equally been his inspiration for certain scenes from mythology such as the works of Vulcan, the god of fire.
Moreover, the melting obtained by fusing iron ore in blast-furnaces, iron ore which itself is pieces extracted from the earth forces us to participate in a show that resembles the birth of the world.
The colors contribute to this original world by the use of darker, more mysterious pigments: a dreary palette pulling towards grey and muddy brown. But also the green that springs up from the central gap and a range of other tints which appear by sporadic brush strokes but without bringing any real clarity to the group of colors (pink on the right, blue on the left and other nuances of brown, red…).
By darkening the composition, the color helps to make it even more impermeable and dense, also concealing its interior liveliness.
This original space painted by Matthew Dibble brings to mind what Henri Maldiney said about certain scenes painted by Cézanne:
“The sub-spatial scheme of every space, the sub-cosmic scheme of every world, that is, a metaphysical deepness” (Maldiney Henri, The ambiguity of the image of the painting, Paris-Lausanne, L’Age d’Homme, 1973).
Indeed, like Cézanne, M. Dibble’s work does not follow the path of academic illusionism, it claims to be fundamental, wakes up a dormant song in all things, so that the work becomes a sort of event arriving.
Since M. Dibble follows mythological themes, this must be understood in his works as an attempt to favor universal issues. There is a hidden order deep within his work. Despite an apparent disorder, the space is organized according to an internal logic thanks to an internal animation and an organic architecture.
In all major works, you find the same reality that Ehrenzweig describes:
“The assault of irrationality against rationality” and where a new order appears, “a hidden order in the structure of art.” (Ehrenzweig’s book – The Hidden Order of Art)
Rothko also thought that art must go deeper:
“The love of art is a ‘feast of ideas’… the crucial point for us isn’t the explanation, but rather knowing if the essential ideas that the painting must communicate have any importance.”
He saw a mystical force in his painting. The chromatic expansions, the areas of color, they possessed according to him a real supernatural power.
And quite often to get to this point of no return, you must, according to the poet Henri Michaux “pierce the skin of something” just to “in the words of Husserl, return to the very thing itself.”
“Pig Iron” is the manifestation of these original worlds, the melting by fusion coming directly from the bowels of the earth. But beyond that, the painter sends us to different reality, one in which the world and earth, light and reservation fight.
Painter of the absolute, M. Dibble requires that art reveal to him the absolute of being. This is why this painting is ravaged by an abundance of impulses, the massiveness, debauchery and violence of the brush strokes to violently provoke the paint so that the hidden, the unsaid is unveiled.
This aggressiveness is created particularly by the gestures of liberation on the canvas, by the lacerations from the knife, the blade of the spatula or the brush. The painter seems to surrender himself to the chaos of sensations, chaos which overwhelms things, gives the illusion of movement while reproducing in some way shockwaves from the universal big bang.
Like Cézanne, he is looking for organization within a painting, the fusion of like things to the geological foundation of the world. The master of Aix-en Provence wanted durable, solid art and was constantly searching for the substantial and timeless side of nature.
Here with this painting, which is supposed to reproduce the melted flow coming out of a blast furnace, the painter also aims to convey the depths this flow. Comparable to the being, it deals with restoring the depths of the being.
Thanks to this work which makes the melting by fusion take shape, the painter leads us pass the simple, superficial experience to make it constantly younger et become like a third eye, a vision from a metaphysical scope.
This falls in line with the analysis of Martin Heidegger who believes that only the work of art allows the being to be unveiled.
“Art makes the truth spew out. Taking the initiative with a single step, art brings the truth to light, while protecting the truth of the coming-to-be. Bringing something to light, bringing it to being from the essential origin and the initial leap, this is what the word “origin” means to us.” (The Origin of the Work of Art by Martin Heidegger).
Oddly enough, this revelation of being also sends us to ancient Greece, home of the mythology that M. Dibble is particularly fond of. In fact, Parmenides, a philosopher who preceded Socrates, already said it best with these seemingly simple words: “the being is; the non-being isn’t.”
With these words, Parmenides sums up the question of being which according to Heidegger had been forgotten in the history of metaphysics. However, for the German philosopher, forgetting the being is not a mere negligence in thought, but rather a part of its structure.
For him, Western thinking does not let the being be. Only painters and Cézanne particularly really allow the truth about the being and the coming-to-be to come about.
From this famous statement by Cézanne: “What I am trying to convey is more mysterious than anything. It’s the labyrinth of the roots themselves of the being, at the source of impalpable sensations.”
This is why we can catch a glimpse of the being when looking at the painting “Pig Iron”, while understanding the work from another standpoint and feeling this impalpable sensation.
Metz, June 11, 2010
Christian Schmitt

PIG IRON de MATTHEW DIBBLE-Break Down by Christian Schmitt

Matthew Dibble est venu tardivement à la peinture, lui qui a toujours pratiqué le dessin depuis l'âge de 13 ans. Il commença à dessiner en utilisant l'encre de Chine et est resté longtemps fasciné par ce liquide noir.

Par la suite, il a essayé à plusieurs reprises la peinture, mais la trouvant souvent trop exigeante, il a dû régulièrement retourner au dessin.

Il estimait que ce qu'il représentait dans ces petits dessins était souvent plus intense et plus profond que ce qu'il pouvait réaliser dans ses grandes toiles. Et ce n'est que récemment qu'il se sent véritablement capable de transposer ses aspirations les plus élevées dans les peintures de grand format.

Par ailleurs, ses premières toiles reprennent souvent les thèmes et les motifs d'origine mythologique qu'il développait déjà abondamment dans ses dessins.

Or avec le tableau « Pig Iron » et d'autres de la même année 2008, Matthew Dibble semble inaugurer un nouveau tournant dans son œuvre le conduisant à des peintures entièrement abstraites. Une peinture qui surprend par l'abondance de la matière et par la violence qui s'y déploie. Une matière constamment triturée et lacérée par le peintre et qui offre le triste spectacle d'un univers meurtri et dévasté.

Ce faisant Matthew Dibble rejoint l'école de l'expressionnisme abstrait qui a marqué fortement la peinture américaine depuis la deuxième guerre mondiale.

En effet la nouvelle direction qu'il a prise ressemble étonnamment à celle d'un certain Rothko qui à partir de 1946 avec une nouvelle série de tableaux, les Multiform, développera également un langage abstrait dans ses peintures. Lui aussi connut antérieurement une période marquée par les thèmes mythologiques.

Ce même Rothko avait peint au début des formes comme des organes en prétextant : "Mon art n'est pas abstrait; il vit et respire". Et plus loin : « ...Un tableau qui n'apporte pas un environnement dans lequel peut s'insuffler le souffle de la vie ne m'intéresse pas. »

De Kooning lui aussi a excellé dans l'abstraction. Même si après la guerre, il mélangeait encore très souvent abstraction et figuration, par contre il se tournera résolument dans les années 50 dans une peinture abstraite et gestuelle avec de larges coups de pinceaux comme des gestes de libération.

Dans cette école de la peinture abstraite aux Etats Unis, il ne faut pas oublier bien évidemment Jackson Pollock. Mais celui-ci se distingue plutôt par l'Action painting, par cette gestualité qui caractérise principalement son travail. Loin d'être seulement une technique, celle-ci permet d'objectiver le travail du peintre.

Le "dripping" lui a permis de résoudre l'antinomie entre la couleur et le trait, d'unir dans le même geste d'épandage la forme et la couleur, le dessin et la peinture. Bref grâce à cette méthode, la peinture de Pollock devient spontanément unitaire.

Par contre dans le travail de Matthew Dibble rien de tout cela, puisque si le tableau "Pig Iron" s'inscrit effectivement dans la mouvance de l'expressionnisme abstrait tel qu'il est décrit précédemment, celui-ci ne peut être relié à l'Action Painting

Chargée d'un trop plein de pulsions, cette œuvre reste en effet résolument abstraite par son aspect tourmenté. Mais comme le peintre utilise toujours le pinceau ou un autre instrument qu'il applique directement sur la toile, il n'y a donc pas de phénomène d'objectivation comme c'est le cas pour la peinture de Pollock.

Son oeuvre se présente comme une peinture épaisse, très généreuse en pigments et distribuée en touches agressives de couleurs sourdes et violentes. Elle est lacérée de toutes parts par des grands coups de pinceaux qui se croisent, s'entrecroisent ou zigzaguent.

On observe également de larges passages du couteau, de la spatule ou de la brosse ce qui conduit notamment à la création d'une profonde trouée au milieu de la composition et à de nombreux aplats.

La spatule ou le couteau lacère parfois avec beaucoup de brutalité la matière jusqu'à l'écorcher à vif, la dépouillant même de sa substance. A certains endroits (en haut et en bas de l'œuvre), la peinture est parfois littéralement éradiquée.

Le résultat de cette violence conduit à la création de poches de peinture comme des moutonnements de congères apparaissant ici et là et qui en séchant créent des sortes de tumulus ou cratères. Tous ces amas sporadiques de matières picturales donnent naissance à la surface de la toile d'une topographie de type lunaire.

Le titre "Pig Iron" qui peut se traduire en français par la fonte obtenue par la fusion du minerai de fer dans les hauts fourneaux justifie le traitement pictural particulier appliqué à cette toile. Cleveland où vit le peintre était un centre industriel important jusqu'à la seconde moitié du XX° s. avant de connaître sa reconversion vers le secteur tertiaire (finance et assurances).

Ainsi Matthew Dibble a vécu une grande partie de sa vie environnée par cette industrie lourde et par l'intense activité déployée par les hauts fourneaux, aciéries et laminoirs qui faisaient partie de son décor quotidien. Et tout cela devait également lui inspirer certaines scènes de la mythologie comme les travaux de Vulcain, le dieu du feu.

De plus cette fonte obtenue par la fusion du minerai de fer lui-même extrait des entrailles de la terre nous fait participer à un spectacle comparable à la naissance du monde.

Les couleurs participent d'ailleurs à cet univers originaire par l'emploi de pigments plus sombres et plus mystérieux : une palette morne tirant vers le gris et le brun terreux. Mais également le vert qui surgit de la trouée centrale et un éventail d'autres teintes qui apparaissent par touches sporadiques mais sans apporter une réelle clarté à l'ensemble (le rose à droite, le bleu à gauche et d'autres nuances de brun, de rouge...).

En assombrissant la composition, la couleur participe à la rendre encore plus imperméable et plus compacte dissimulant également son animation intérieure.

Cet espace originaire peint par Matthew Dibble rappelle ce que disait Henri Maldiney à propos de certaines scènes peintes par Cézanne:

« Le schème sub-spatial de tout espace, le schème sub-cosmique de tous les mondes, c'est-à-dire une métaphysique de la profondeur » (Maldiney Henri, L'Equivoque de l'image de la peinture, Paris-Lausanne, L'Age d'Homme, 1973).

Effectivement comme Cézanne, le travail de M.Dibble ne suit pas l'itinéraire de l'illusionnisme académique, il se veut fondamental, réveille un chant endormi en tout chose, pour que l'œuvre devienne une sorte d'événement-avènement.

Déjà dans le fait de s'attacher à des thèmes mythologiques cela doit être compris chez M.Dibble comme une tentative de privilégier les questions universelles. Au plus profond de son œuvre se dissimule un ordre caché, l'espace s'ordonne malgré un désordre apparent selon une logique intérieure grâce à une animation interne et une architecture organique.

Dans toutes les grandes œuvres on découvre la même réalité comme le décrit notamment Ehrenzweig:

« L'attaque de la déraison contre la raison » et où paraît un ordre nouveau, « un ordre caché dans la structure de l'art ». (livre d'Ehrenzweig - l'ordre caché de l'art)

Rothko également pensait que l'art doit aller plus loin:

« L'amour de l'art est une "noce des idées » (...) le point crucial n'est pas pour nous l' « explication », mais la question de savoir si les idées essentielles que doit communiquer le tableau ont quelque importance. »

Il voyait dans son travail de peintre comme une force mystique à l'œuvre. Ainsi les expansions chromatiques, les surfaces de couleur, étaient douées selon lui d'une véritable puissance surnaturelle.

Et bien souvent pour arriver à ce point de non retour, il faut selon la formule du poète Henri Michaux « crever la peau des choses » et tout cela « pour revenir, selon mot de Husserl, aux choses mêmes. »

« Pig Iron » se présente comme la manifestation de ces mondes originaires, la fonte en fusion comme sortant directement des entrailles de la terre. Mais au-delà, le peintre nous renvoie à une réalité autre, celle d'un combat entre monde et terre, entre l'éclaircie et la réserve

Peintre de l'absolu, M.Dibble demande à l'art de lui révéler l'absolu de l'être. C'est pourquoi cette toile est ravagée par le trop plein de pulsions, la massivité, la débauche et la violence des touches pour provoquer violemment la matière afin qu'elle lui dévoile le caché, le non-dit.

Cette agressivité se manifeste notamment par ces gestes de libération sur la toile, par les lacérations du pinceau, du couteau de la spatule ou de la brosse. Le peintre semble se livrer au chaos des sensations, chaos qui fait chavirer les choses, donne l'illusion du mouvement en restituant en quelque sorte les ondes de choc du big-bang universel.

Comme Cézanne, il cherche en peinture l'organisation, le fondement des choses semblable aux assises géologiques du monde. Le maître d'Aix-en-Provence voulait un art du durable, du solide et était en quête permanente de l'aspect consistant et intemporel de la nature.

Ici par ce tableau qui est censé reproduire la coulée de la fonte à la sortie d'un haut fourneau, le peintre vise aussi à rendre la profondeur du fond où celle-ci surgit. Par équivalence avec l'être, il s'agit de restituer cette profondeur d'être.

Grâce à cette œuvre qui fait sourdre cette fonte en fusion, le peintre nous conduit à dépasser la simple expérience perceptive, pour la rajeunir constamment et devenir comme le troisième œil, une vision de portée métaphysique.

Cela rejoint l'analyse de Martin Heidegger qui considère que seule l'œuvre d'art permet le dévoilement de l'être.

« L'art fait jaillir la vérité. D'un seul bond qui prend les devants, l'art fait surgir en tant que sauvegarde instauratrice, la vérité de l'étant.
Faire surgir quelque chose d'un bond qui devance, l'amener à l'être à partir de la provenance essentielle et dans le saut instaurateur, voilà ce que nous signifie le mot origine. » (Origine de l'œuvre d'art de Martin Heidegger)

Curieusement cette révélation de l'être nous renvoie aussi à la Grèce antique, foyer de la mythologie qu'affectionne particulièrement M.Dibble. En effet un certain Parménide, qui est un philosophe pré-socratique disait déjà l'essentiel par ces quelques mots qui ont l'air tout simple: « l'être est; le non-être n'est pas ».

En disant ces quelques mots Parménide résume toute cette question de l'être qui selon Heidegger avait été oubliée dans l'histoire de la métaphysique. Mais pour le philosophe allemand, cet oubli de l'être n'est pas une simple négligence de la pensée, mais fait partie de sa structure même.

Pour lui la pensée occidentale ne laisse pas être l'être. Seuls les peintres et Cézanne notamment permettent véritablement de faire advenir la vérité de l'être des étants.

D'où cette fameuse déclaration de Cézanne: « Ce que j'essaie de vous traduire est plus mystérieux que tout. C'est l'enchevêtrement aux racines mêmes de l'être, à la source de l'impalpable sensation »

C'est pourquoi, au contact de « Pig Iron » on peut entrevoir cette éclaircie de l'être, en appréhendant l'œuvre d'un autre regard et éprouver cette impalpable sensation.


Metz, le 11 juin 2010.


Christian Schmitt

Christian Schmitt on Matthew Dibble's painting-"Wounded Wizard" (English)

Wounded Wizard (oil on canvas) 91,30 x 75,20 cm, 2007.

« Wounded Wizard », this work, produced in 2007 by Matthew Dibble, an American painter from Cleveland, contains element of surprise.

It represents a human face that one could consider “prismatic” since one has the impression of seeing it at the same time straight on as well as in profile. In effect, juxtaposing the two sides produces a strange optical effect comparable to that of a prism.

Moreover, the face which appears on each side seems to be disfigured. On the left, its profile with one eye, a mouth askew, or really showing two, and then on the right a face with another eye, a nose,and another mouth...Obviously, all that indicates a certain discord: the simultaneous vision of two sides of a distorted face is particularly alarming especially because of the third part of this enigma which appears over the other two.

Happily, the head “unifies” the ensemble with a high, rounded forehead. The individual seems to be bald,
unless the two forms protruding behind the skull are in reality , the last two shocks of his remaining hair .

In fact, this strange character is not unique in the world of Matthew Dibble. For years, in his drawings and then in his paintings, this artist has been creating a pantheon of monstrous beings, often with a half-human-half bestial appearance, worthy of ancient mythology.

This is why one can affirm that this painter from Cleveland continues to some extent the work of the twentieth century surrealists . Following the example of Chirico, notably, Matthew Dibble shows us a haunted, foreboding work displaying disturbing forces.

All of that signifies the irruption of the unconscious which makes its theatrical entrance in this painting, and Matthew Dibble himself, supports this analysis by speaking of his work as a psychological painting in a recent email received on April 4, 2010:
“This painting is psychological...”

But this phenomenon is not new, since Marcel Duchamp had seen in Courbet, the father of the modern painters, the intervention of “the subconscious hand” and also quite evidently in the work of Matthew Dibble, where his work escapes pure reason.

Thus in his work, mystery takes shape, thanks to his personal style of presenting the human face by using distorted perspective or rather by inventing new perspectives, split in two or multiplied in the very style of Chirico. In so doing, he forces the laws of art, and offers not a superhuman image, but one which is “super humanized.”..!
As for Chirico, in justifying his style of painting, he did not hesitate to say:

“One must not forget that a canvas must always show the reflection of a deep feeling, and that “deep ” signifies profound or foreign and that “foreign” signifies little known or completely unknown. In order for a work of art to be truly immortal, it is necessary that it go completely beyond human limits. In this manner it will approach the dream of the childlike spirit.” (taken from his writings during a stay in Paris between 1911 and 1915.)

This is why, like Chirico, Matthew Dibble feels the need for going beyond to escape the anguish of modern man as well as to escape his own, personal anguish. This desire for going past the limits is going to take on his part, the road of the unknown through the creatures who populate his universe.

In that, he is also loyal to that which Nietzsche proposed as a new tension of consciousness and the unconscious.:

“With the strength of his intellectual vision and of his view of himself enlarging the distance and to some extent the space which surrounds man, the world becomes more profound; new enigmas and new images present themselves to his view.
Perhaps everything on which the eye of the spirit has exerted its sagacity and its profundity has been nothing but a pretext to this exercise; a game and a childish folly. Perhaps someday, the most solemn ideas, those which have provoked the greatest struggles and the greatest suffering , the ideas of «God» and of « sin » will have for us no more importance than children's toys and and childhood disappointments in the eyes of an old man.
And perhaps this“old man” does he still need another toy and another sorrow – feeling himself still enough of a child, eternally a child!” (Beyond Good and Evil, I.57)

This pessimistic account of modern man will serve to to drive him continuously to go beyond the norm without rendering himself truly happy since anguish will exist forever.
Consequently, to live, quite simply, he needs to come closer to the dreams and the spirit of a child.

On the part of Matthew Dibble, that will take the form of a particular attraction to ancient myths.
In that, he is also the disciple of a certain Jean Cocteau, the most famous contemporary mythographer. In order to justify his passion, Cocteau wrote in the form of witticism:

« I have always preferred mythology to history because history is made up of truths which become untruths in the long run and mythology is made of of untruths which become truths over time».

More seriously, Cocteau often used myths to help him to express the limits of the cognitive faculty of man and notably of the passage from the conscious to the unconscious (the enigmatic Sphinx of Thebes, for example).

But in reality, here, to call upon myths and mythology seems less operant. Indeed the man whom one sees in this work appears to be the painter, himself, and therefore, it would be about his own self-portrait.


Moreover the title, « Wounded Wizard » which can be translated into French as
« Le magicien blessé » gives us a primary indication.

In the aforementioned email, the artist had revealed “his wound “ in speaking of his work. According to him, he suffers from not being the artist that he would wish to be and constantly doubts himself and his work.

Furthermore, he is even more explicit in speaking of a painting of a psychological nature.
“ I suffer the fact that I’m not the man or artist I could be, that I can always be better.”


The image that he sends to us in this work is thus the result of the emergence of his subconscious into the painting. The disfigurement inflicted on its face goes a long way to attest more amply to that.

It is in the tradition of painters like Picasso who deliberately deformed the face and the body of their characters for the single goal of better understanding and feeling (sic) them .

Notably he painted Dora Maar as a woman crying, disfigured and hysterical, to announce a catastrophe or some situation of despair.

Other artists have worked in the same style: Dali by disfiguring in order to make a surrealist symbol of scorn and Francis Bacon who to better emphasize pain and sadness will use the face as a raw material. He will use it by destroying it to the extreme to produce a traumatic expression of horror.

In the same manner, expressionists such as Egon Schiele will also break down the human body leading to an expressive radicalness which is sometimes extreme (see his self-portrait)

And not forgetting also DeKooning,who in his series of portraits of Women uses this same process. His friend Barnett Newman justified this approach by stating n 1962:
“People were painting a pretty world but we realized that the world was not beautiful. The question, the moral question that we each asked ourselves—DeKooning, Pollock, myself—was to find out: What would be necessary to beautify it?”

Very fortunately, Matthew Dibble has no intention of beautifying the world nor of overshadowing his own torment. His anguish is perceptible in this work and it is recreated with much sincerity and a great economy of means. This minimalist work seems closer to a drawing than to a true painting.

The only colors : (white, black and shaded ocher) are used merely in the background and only to color the backdrop of the canvas. Just the black line gives life to this painting: true sculpted poetry recreated in terse, simple means!

Matthew Dibble perfectly masters the use of the line and succeeds particularly in tracing dark circles around the eyes to create a mood of profound concern or worry.
The internal fusion compensates for any apparent minimalism, thanks to the brush stroking which shows itself to be masterful.

The qualities of simplicity, precision, and lyricism, recreate a pure, clean image...but all is happily not explained or put forth in this work.
The painting « Wounded Wizard » still remains radiant with enigma!

Christian Schmitt, April 5, 2010
translation by Darlene L. Nelson

Smaller-scale drawings reveal artist's power of personality.

Friday, January 20, 2006 Zachary Lewis Special to The Plain Dealer

Painting is Matt Dibble's claim to modest fame in Northeast Ohio, but it isn't his first love. Pencils, pen and ink were his tools well before brushes and oils, and they've never been far from his hand.
The drawings themselves have remained even closer. Ever since his days at Cooper School of Art, Dibble has tended to reserve his drawings exclusively for family and friends, insisting they were too personal for the general public.
But there was one friend who insisted on sharing. Christopher Pekoc, a prominent local artist and an art instructor at Case Western Reserve University, championed the drawings and convinced Dibble to exhibit them.
"The drawings have a basic power," Pekoc says. "They come from a place that's totally honest. The paintings, too, are impressive, but they don't pull me in the same way these strange figures do. The lines in the drawings are so sure, and the proportions are very attractive."
If Dibble was shy about his drawings, at least he didn't have to transport them very far. He found a willing venue directly across the hall from his downtown Cleveland studio: a new multipurpose gallery called Studio of Five Rings. Founded in October 2004 by Youngstown native Matt Cook, Five Rings does triple duty as a winery and a martial arts school.
It's not a large space. Pekoc had more than 100 drawings to choose from, but was forced to narrow the show down to 15 pieces. Each one of them, however, reveals an exceptionally confident hand. Faces, bodies and other shapes overlap in multiple perspectives in a way that recalls the cubism of Picasso. Yet their sparseness and bold outlines call to mind Chinese brush paintings. There are even traces of Surrealism in a stitching pattern Dibble occasionally employs.
Strangely, though, the drawings bear little or no resemblance to the rest of Dibble's vast output. In contrast to the paintings -- large, colorful abstracts -- the drawings are black and white and essentially figural. All but one are small, too, roughly the size of an average sheet of typing paper, while any one of the paintings alone could occupy an entire wall.
It's not immediately clear why Dibble sheltered this body of work from the public. There's nothing intimate about the compositions themselves, nor do their titles ("Pointy Idiot," "Without Fire," "Taller Every Second") give away anything particularly confidential.
Still, the artist had his reasons -- and pretty good ones at that. Dibble says all those fragmented figures represent various aspects of his personality, aspects that aren't necessarily flattering.
"I know that once people see these, they're going to come up with deep psychological interpretations about me," he says. "But the fact is, the spiritual, sacred things, always come to me at the oddest moments."

Claudio Parentela Interview: Matthew Dibble

q) What is your earliest art-related memory?

In 1964 when I was seven years old I vividly remember seeing the Pieta by Michelangelo at the World’s Fair in New York and being overwhelmed.

q) Who has had the greatest influence on your work?

Working closely with students of the Gurdjieff Work.

q) What are the main tools of your craft?

Brushes and trowels.

q) Is a formal education important?

For me it was, I learned the value of good drawing in Art School.

q) What is the biggest misconception about art?

That it has any thing to do with natural ability.

q) Which is more important in art - concept or execution?

Too much mind can be an obstacle.

q) What theme or aesthetic are you most drawn too?

The painting are psychological, seeing my self as I really am- is difficult. Some times I have glimpses of larger possibilities. I examine through the figurative work a very rich inner life and am “surprised by joy” often in the studio.

q) What is your favorite piece of art in your home?

The best designed, most functional and use full sculpture in my house is the bathroom throne.

q) If you could collaborate with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?

A difficult question. I would like to have met Ian Curtis.

q) Which emerging artist do you think more people should know about?

There’s a very interesting Arts writer in France right now named Christian Schmitt.

q) What has been your greatest achievement to date?

In my early years I led an alcoholic life but in 1984 was given a reprieve. I’ve not had my sobriety interrupted for the last 26 Years.

q) What has been your biggest roadblock?

I suffer the fact that I’m not the man or artist I could be, that I can always be better.

q) How do you define success?

When you can look in the mirror and not be afraid of the man in the glass.

q) What will be the name of your autobiography?

Diary of an Amateur or Ego Without Substance

q) What is the best piece of (art-related) advice you’ve ever been given?

Each moment is a new opportunity, be attentive.


Matthew Dibble 5/6/10

Claudio Parentela:Campione delle arti

www.claudioparentela.net

Born in Catanzaro(1962-Italy) where he lives and works…Claudio Parentela is an illustrator,painter,photographer,mail artist,cartoonist,collagist,journalist free lance,Tarotologist(Tarot and Psychic Readings)...Active since many years in the international underground scene.He has collaborated&he collaborates with many,many zines,magazines of contemporary art,literary and of comics in Italy and in the world...& on the paper and on the web...some name amongst the many:NYArtsMagazine,Turntable & Blue Light Magazine,
Komix,LitChaos,Why Vandalism,Thieves Jargon,180 Mag,Braintwisting,The Doors of Creativity Anthology,Lo Sciacallo Elettronico,Inguine,Stripburger,Lavirint,Komikaze, Mystery Island Magazine,Monoclab, MungBeing Magazine,The Lummox Journal,The Cherotic R(e)volutionary,Sick Puppy,Malefact,Gordo,johnmagazine, SHITTY SHEEP-Lamette, alchimiadeldolore,Be|Different, UpScene Magazine ,Chance,Lucid Moon, Tryst ,Carolina Vigna Maru’s Blog, Abusemagazine, hijacked, Synthesis, filosofem.com, Spartandog, Numbmagazine,DrexterMagz,Que Suerte,Art Life,Pintalo De Verde,ApArte,Evasion,The Benway Institute,Phony Lid Publications,First Class,This Is Magazine,Diesel,Stu Magazine, Becoming Journal , Exposweb, Pockoville,Crane Magazine,Staplegun, Zupi ,4x6-art, Funtime Comics,Untergruntblatte, lartmagazine, Passenger May, Sekushi , Onthecamper,Head Press,Entmoot, Lartmagazine,You&Me,Rorschach,Fagorgo,B.G.A.Comix,Tracce,Prospektiva,Balkan Spirit,Liberazione.net,Don Juan Online,Emozioni, Digitalabstract,Fatece Largo,Petrolio,Out Zine,Pssst Zine,Bolle Di Cartone,All About Fucking,Gibbering Madness,Rotkop,Anima Mal Nata,ZZZzine,Labour Of Love,Bianco D’Uovo,Bries,Ratriot,Kami Zine,Pus!,Bathtub Gin,Experimental Forest,Stardust Memories,Sunburn,Funtime Comics,Spaghetti,Plop,Topaz&Psichedelica,Joey and The Black Boots,Blind Man’s Rainbow,The White Buffalo Gazzette,Lore,Lunatic,Chamelon,Rigodor,Axolotl,Luca Bonanno Editore,Succo Acido,Pitchfork,Chainsmoker,Surface,Crimson Feet,Skyline,Re:Magazine,Oyster Boy Review,Anthology,Xero Magazine,Slic,Lit Pot Press, warmtoast cafe,Gumball Poetry,Mineshaft,Milk&Wodka,Yahoo Zine,Stardust Memories,CartaIgienica,Faestethic,Field Report,Out Of The Blue,Comfusion Magazine,Careful,Ellin Selae,Multistorey,Disegni Di Sogni,Omnibus,The Sound Projector,Gooch Magazine,Laugh Clown Laugh,Shift, Castlemagazine- WAMtv,Vial,Frior,Debilana,Cool Strip Anthology,Territory,Panik, weblog.bezembinder.nl,Celulit,Pimba,OtomanoProper Gander,Container,Mammamiaquantosangue,Cikuta,Traspiratore,Gambuzine,Empty Life,Erroneo,Kalte Tage,Planeta Underground,Cabezabajo, Poetexpress,Nexus,Criade,Love Eternal Lost Infernal,Algiza,Raven,A.K.O.M.,Mutate & Survive,Angelflesh Press,Skirocore,Sirota Jerica,Zone Optimiste De Bande Dessinèe,Breakfast All Day,The Brown Bottle,Crystal Drum,The Brobdingnan Time,Edgar,Il Foglio Clandestino,Microbe,New York Press,Something Else,O!!Zone,Vitriol,The Flashing Astonisher,Devil Blossoms,Contagio,The Dream Zone,Sinus,Yops Zine,Versus Press, lamoira. –ultrazine-graphola-tribenet-linarte-homme-moderne-furtherfield-globevisions-artbabyart- UpScene Magazine -zanzibart-braintwisting-arte.go-designradar-sitart-sciacalloelettronico-artfaq- Caveat Lector-lazaruscorporation-ionone-lospaziobianco-youandiproductions-artrenegades-artbureau-cimaisevirtuelle-americanspiritstudios-Choler Magazine-graphiland-artpoetryfiction-catalyzerjourna-ambulant-surfaceonline-lambiek-thebluesmokeband—equilibriarte-gumballpoetry-cafeshops-subtletea-vu gallery-silverfish-zeroboutique-mondocolorado-succoacido-artzar-unlikelystories-discord-aggregate-latchkey.net-bewilderingstories-artbarge-yokeandzoom-bhag.net-chaosgeneration-artgalerie34-lobstupidfish-netcells.net-thundersandwich-sensuoussadie-thepedestalmagazine- BecomingJournal- No More Flowers -Space Junkies Magazine-lucidmoonpoetry-ubq-plumrubyreview-komikaze-tattoohighway-Burrow Magazine-Swoon Magazine-artistswithoutfrontiers- WAMTV-...El Eros Incesante -thedigitalartist-doubledarepress-theaxis-cloudking-monkeyview- Y SIN EMBARGO magazine - Degrees of Separation- WeirdArt-drunkenboat-erreur404-bigbridge-monkeyview-opensewer-oysterboyreview-labisagra-Entero'ziNe-arti(e)rumori –botulinux-tenaviv-eternarte-fameweb-erbadellastrega-muse-apprentice-guild-dimensionearte-socialdesignzine-indiejournal- thanalonline-Rorschach-roxybar-genomart-spreadhead-duepunti- AnythingILike- LIFE DURING WARTIME- surreal collages-
-stategrezzi-agliincrocideiventi-stradanove-Tiscali Arte-hybridstudios-arthal-socialdesignzine-boxart-.eroxe-edizioniriccardi-art.e-zine-erroneo-SOGNOdiSEGNI 2002-clubghost-musicheart-linguaggioglobale- dwarfcadaver -actarus-xseven-whipart-girodivite-ideerandage-gordo.it-erbadellastrega-skorieindustriali-wema-Entero'ziNe-robotswillkill-omnisat-lucidmoonpoetry-H+Art-komikaze-hoardmag-phueydesign-Culture1.com-tattoohighway-arteutile-herecomethewilddogs-RetortMagazine- subculture-lovepain.com-showcomplex-lobstupidfish-wormwoodchronicles-ArtRemains-gallerythe-prettythings- artsingulier--dustydomino-halfempty- americanartists-cartaigienica-escualotis-artactif-webdesignersexperiments-outsiderink-pseudolo-samsara-strangedude-globevisions-lospaziobianco-yokeandzoom-cafeblu-casaditolleranza-equilibriarte-stickyourneckout- artrevolt project- Hugo Strikes Back!-botulinux-literarypotpourri-locomediadub-halfempty-Choler Magazine-Mistery Island Magazine-inkpots-artisticdevil-lamette-studiocleo-lovepain-tribenet-inguine.net-Hermatena-prosetoad-stickyourneckout-pickwick-samsara-artfaq-rorschachonline-arte.go-jamcafe magazine-locomediadub-Animals in Mailart –roxybar-Arts Ablaze Gallery –Filosofem-enfusemagazine-sensuallogic-phirebrush-millenniumartgallery-dork magazine-galleryculture-Escáner Cultural-digitalconsciousness-Arts Ablaze Gallery –mousikelab-fameweb-socialdesignzine-theshowingplace- warmtoast cafe-gumballpoetry-invisibleinsurrection-hybridstudios-digizine-charnwood-arts-surface-wiredheart-poemus-artrenegades-mindcaviar-succoacido-gallerythe-Vulcanoidi- The Lamp-Araba Fenice -net-art-artetop-guzzardi.it-mentalcontagion-furtherfield-catalyzerjournal-Cristian S. Aluas CSA Books-Lummox Press/Journal-lovechess-americanspiritstudios-Mashnote Magazine ...- ANIMAL magazine- Wicked -TheArtSource- Not The Tate, gallery- nonzi-escmagazine-graphiczone-theamericanskin-undergroundxchange-Silent Presence Gallery-publiceyesore-locusmag-Unwound-cartaigienica-Buiten Westen -armando adolgiso.it-artdish-the-vu-BATHTUB GIN -JHON magazine-bonobo-galleryculture-linguaggioglobale-progettobabele-subsystence-samsaraquarterly-traspi.net-arteecarte-galerieserrano-vicodelferro-woesteweduwe-dimensionearte-braintwisting-topolin-prospektiva-placesofart-falsestart-GLUBIBULGA' -arti(e)rumori –cafepress-annotazioni-electronic-art-edizioniriccardi-ilbolerodiravel-subculture-arthal-sitart-citizen32-paroladidonna-lilacedius-essendemme-inguine.net- DarkArtists-tangents-cimaisevirtuelle-riflessioni-jackmagazine-Exquisite Corpse -obscurity . webzine -UBQ | Leave Your Fingerprint-Rivista Anarchica Online-bedfordnovel-poemus-Tiscali - Arte-wormsarts-atopiaonline-dorkmag-digizine-pigmag-outsiderink-ROJO®magazine –doubledarepress-redfoxpress-HOARD MAGAZiNE -NoTxt Magazine -filtered-magazine-Arts Ablaze Gallery –thewissahickon-doubledarepress-hoardmag-thundersandwich- rockheals-CimarronReview-charnwood-arts-jackmagazine-madhattersreview-Whalelane- BoundlessGallery-oysterboyreview-thewissahickon-invisibleinsurrection-aliens-cafe-masthead-ambulant-roxybar-blank-magazine-funtime.comics- ConArt-lovechess-zafusy- P.F.S.-bigbridge- EOTU Ezine - OK ARTE-SpokenWar- Bant Magazine-Hybrid Studios-lunaticchameleon-fearsmag-Mashnote Magazine –fifthstreetreview-locusmag-theaxis-XERO Magazine-litvision-inkpots-ESC! Magazine ––Animal Raw Art- Spent Meat- artbarge-buitenwesten-artuindenfair-youandiproductions- ionone-takingitglobal-thepedestalmagazine-Half Empty –iconique-smallspiralnotebook- Transmission Magazine-sidewalkpoetry-vialmagazine-peaceseed-monophobic-thepoisonedapple-two-zero-Exquisite Corpse –kenagain-HEAD magazine-zerooneart-virtuallyinfamous-BATHTUB GIN - Illustrationmundo,Gambuzine-tenthousandmonkeys-CHANCE MAGAZINE-channel83.gallery-soupskin.- spreadhead- thelemming-prettythings-funhousemagazine-gallery-21-leportillon-raggededgepress-Bonobo galerie –hexvalue-netcells-retortmag-crystaldrum-locomedia-cafepress-Tokyo Cow-kufia-Crack! Fumetti dirompenti -Corps Possibles - Identités Possibles-retortmag-artrecess-johnmagazine-Tiscali - Arte-Roxy Web - Arte-biographic.ubq-deliriohouse-indiejournal-Outsider Ink-latchkey-poopsheet-lamoira-tribenet-linarte-homme-moderne-globevisions-artbabyart-zanzibart-arte.go-sitart-sciacalloelettronico-pseudolo-illu-station-botulinux-lazaruscorporation-lospaziobianco-Federico Feroldi Arte Contemporanea-rockheals-cimaisevirtuelle-americanspiritstudios-Choler Magazine-The House of Tate-artpoetryfiction-otro.it-Outsider Ink-Cimaise Virtuelle -GQ-La Tora Web-Mutate&Survive-Doodlers Anonymous-latchkey.net-Mashnote Magazine –Anteism-vorticeargentina-spreadhead-indiejournal-3rdthought-edificewrecked-galerieserrano-sugardrum-curiousculture-wrath.de-Magpie Magazine-Lazer ArtZine-DoDmag-Dark Sky Magazine,Paraphilia Magazine,New Chemical History,Cut-click Magazine,Dirt Cheap Magazine,GOB Magazine,Bedlam Magazine,Platform58e-zine,MetaCreativemagazine,TrustMe Magazine,BAIAANG*,AndIStillMissYou,(Cirkumfleks) Magazine
,glassesglasses,Supernova Magazine,dximagazine ...
…etc…etc…and the list could continue again a long time…
During the 1999 he was guest of the BREAK 21 FESTIVAL in Ljubliana(Slovenja)...
...His obscure&crazy artworks are present &shown in many,many art galleries in the endless web...and then again at ’’GIRASOLE’’(Villa Basilica),at ’’TABULA RASA’’(Barcellona),at Vahagnartgallery ,at ‘’GALERIE SLAPHANGER’’(Amsterdam),at ‘’La Casa Di Tolleranza’’(Milan),at’’La Cueva-No Art Gallery’’(Milan),at Spazio Aurora(Milan),at Forte Prenestino(Rome),at Andenken Gallery(USA),at’’ HOEPLI INTERNATIONAL BOOKSTORE EXHIBITION SPACE’’(Milan), at Skorie Industriali(Rome),at theMUKY(Faenza), in Turin with the Association’’Mind The Gap’’,at The ‘’Pina Gallery’’(Koper),al ‘’Diesel Gallery’’(NY),at the ‘’METAVERSO’’(Rome),at the''Virtual Shoe Museum'',,at ‘’Little Cakes Gallery’’(NY),at the’’Interzona’’(Verona), at ’’Trainside Gallery’’(Haverhill,USA),at ‘’Blah Blah Gallery’’(U.S.A.),at ’’Scaremongering Gallery’’(USA),at ‘’Sage Club’’ (Berlin),at ‘’Panda Club’’ (Pistoia),at Creativa2006(Rignano sull’Arno-FI-Italy)),CAM_Casoria Contemporary Art Museum(Casoria,NA,Italy),at ‘’Cultural Association EKIDNA(Carpi-MO-Italy)- at Glowinski’s' Library(Olesnica-PL), ‘’Da Marisa Gallery’’XM 24(Bo-Italy),’’ Blog on Arthur Rimbaud’’ 2 shows at the Castello di Rivara, near Torino ,and at the the San Carpoforo church, place of the Accademia d’Arte di Brera in Milano, at ‘’Tenax’’ (Firenze),at ‘’Teatro Studio’’ di Scandicci (Firenze),at the Libreria Segnalibro of Ferrara(with the show’’Tarocchi Evoluti’’organized by the Associazione Hermatena),at ‘’Ambasciata di Marte (Florence)’’,at ‘’Klyk’’ (Firenze), at ‘’The Wurst Gallery’’(Portland-U.S.A.)- at Red Labels(Toronto-Canada), at Centre for Graphic Arts HogeDRUKgebied(Rotterdam-NL), at Galerija DLUM(Maribor-SI), at ’’Achab’’(Catania) and at all the other sicilian stops of the show’’SognoDiSegni’’,at Artitude Gallery(Paris),at ‘’Zo Cafè’’(Bologna),at the show'' the show''CHILDREN NO MORE''(Bari-Italy),''at the Barcode(San Benedetto del Tronto-Italy),at Circolo Culturale Bertold Brecht(Milano-Italy), NO.HUMAN.NO.CRY(Monza-IT), at Atkinson Art Gallery ( Southport UK),at’’ DYNAMO’’ (Milano-Italy),at the show’’Arredi Digitali’’in San Benedetto Del Tronto and at the shows that GRAPHOLA has organized and continues to organize...at’’Leave Your Fingerprints’’ organized by the friend Mimmo Manes&UBQ,at ‘’ Fira Magica de Santa Susanna’’(Spain),at''GUAPOPO Gallery''(Spain),at’’Sechiisland's Micro Gallery’’(Brasil),at ‘’Museum of Porn in Art’’(Zurich),Cranky Yellow(Saint Louis, MO-US),at''Hoody Art Gallery''(London-UK),at’’Black Maria Gallery(LA-USA),at’’Third Drawer Dawn(Australia),at"Green Art Fair Miami 08",at 3rdthought, at ''Umber Studios''(Minneapolis-USA),,at''Zoccoletti e Zoccolette''(BIOKIP GALLERY @ Pervinca OpenSpace-Milan-It),at ''The Woom Gallery''(Birmingham-UK)-SPAZIO ARKA(Assemini centro (CA)),''SUBject Festival''(Bologna-It),CeC 2009 Uttarakland (India),at ''I MALEDETTI DEL ROCK ITALIANO''(Palazzo del Podestà,Città di Castello-IT),''Human Emotion Project''(Brancaleone,Rome It),''Ocho Delicate Nature''(Milan-It),''Ocho global group exhibition & book''(Barcelona-Spain),at the ''Mezzanine''collective show curated by Chillin's Productions(San Francisco-U.S.A.),''®out 3ª Mostra Internacional d'Art Urbà Publicitari''(Barcelona-Spain),''Inspiration Art Exhibition 3''(Tel Aviv-Israel),at''Phobia''collective show at the''Gallery'101'(Kaunas-Lithuania),at the''#2AdunanzAutogestitArtisti''(CasalBertone -Rome-IT),at the ITALIAN INSTITUTE OF CULTURE(London-UK),at''Juessey Art Gallery(Njardvik Reykjanesby-Iceland),at''EMERGENZAarte''(Villa Farsetti_Santa Maria di Sala_Venice-IT),at ''EART(h)EART(Italy),at''Galleria Derbylius ''(Milano-IT)...and again..and again to other ...He does a lot of mail art and he partecipates to all the mail art projects he knows...
...He has collaborated and he collaborates with many bands of industrial music,noise,experimental&electronic,harsh&death&metal gore...punx....
...He has illustrated poems and stories&music of Gavin Burrows,Harry Wilkens,Vittorio Baccelli,Claudio Morici, Alberto Rizzi,Cristiano Quadalti,Shannon Colebank,Gary Sneyd,Robert Smith,Michael Kriesel,Mark Sonnenfeld,Nathan Medema,Richard D.Houff,...drawn together for&with Maurizio Bianchi M.B,Elvi Athan,Marcel Herms,Kapreles...
...for various publishers he has realized some booklets of illustrations and comics:’’Il Ratto Bavoso’’,and’’L’Incubo Dimezzato’’(Innovation Studio-B.G.A.Comix-Italy);’’Fashion Robot’’(David Lasky-Seattle-USA),’’L’Agnello Sacrificale e la Salamandra Impiccata al Patè 666’’(Medicina Nucleare-Italy);’’Storie’’(Progetto Siderurgiko-Italy),’’Eudemoni’’and’’Piccola Trilogia Nera’’(Poems of Alberto Rizzi and of Cristiano Quadalti with Claudio Parentela’s illustrations -Criatu Prod.-Italy);’’Jeanne Dark You Got Balls’’ and’’The Frogs’ Ballet’’(Self-produced);’’Black Kisses and Other Stories’’,and ‘’The Book Of Secrets’’(La Cafetiere Editions-Belgium);’’Endless Tongue’’(texts of Richard D.Houff and Claudio Parentela’s illustrations -The Benway Institute-USA),’’Else Beds’’(Claudio Parentela’s illustrations and poems of Nathan Medema-JesusBunny Press-Canada);’’The Savage Soldier’’(Luca Menichini Prod.-Italy);’’Derrumbe’’( Valter Casini Ed.-Italy),’’Matter Ballet’’(Claudio Parentela’s illustrations and poems of Michael Kriesel-BoneWorld Publishing-USA),’’Social Reform’’(poems of Shannon Colebank and Claudio Parentela’s illustrations-Whizzbanger Prod.-USA);’’Le Miopi Della Montagna’’(Underground-Press-Italy).''The Weak Cuckoo''(Gran Negro Publisher-Spain).…He has drawn 2 tarots for’’Tarocchi Evoluti’’(published by Associazione Hermatena-Italy)...and always Hermatena Publishers has published my last and new tarots' deck''I Tarocchi dell'Iride''...
and on the web he is present on many pages and in many places again...

Radawec show is fun and smart- L. Kent Wolgamott

"We're Not in Kansas Anymore" is, of course, one of the most famous lines from "The Wizard of Oz." It's also now the title of an intriguing, highly entertaining Project Room exhibition by Bill Radawec that uses the film as a launching point for its series of tiny tableaux set in small wooden boxes.

Populating the tableaux are "little people," a takeoff on the Munchkins from Oz. But it's not the Frank Baum story or its filmed version that fascinates Radawec. Rather it is the tales of debauchery by the Munchkins at the hotel where they were housed during the filming of the movie that has drawn his interest.

Whether those tales of orgies and drunkenness are true is beside the point - Radawec's narratives in a box mix fact and fiction, blending references to real people and events (including the Parma, Ohio, artist himself) with imagined occurrences.

The narratives take place in a series of small, smoothly sanded wooden boxes, no more than 5 or 6 inches long, 2 or 3 inches wide and about 3 inches deep. Viewing the handpainted "little people" (actually HO model train figures) and their constructed world comes from above - which means you have to get next to the work and to the wall to see inside.

The world they inhabit is primarily the art world, specifically galleries where work is on display and a very odd mixture of patrons is doing all sorts of things in the space around the art.

One tableau, for example, finds a busty woman in a Santa outfit sharing the space with an Orthodox Jewish man and a monk in a robe. What would bring such a group together and what are they doing? That's left to the imagination of the viewer, but the juxtaposition of the "people" and what they represent is all Radawec.

Even stranger is a scene in which a man is holding a woman hostage with a gun pointed at her head. In front of them stands another female figure, lifting her shirt to flash her breasts. The questions of what is going on, etc., in that little grouping are heightened by another, more practical query: Who knew that model train figures were so violent and sexual?

A couple of the boxes make direct references to contemporary artists. One reproduces in tiny fashion the giant butterfly paintings of Damien Hirst, a very tempting target. There's a man being videotaped there - perhaps a shot at the publicity-obsessed Hirst - along with a trash bin (more commentary?) and, at the end of the tiny gallery, a naked man and boy and a chimpanzee. You figure it out.

Another box makes a nod to Richard Prince, a man on a horse galloping through the space referring to his Marlboro Man series, while Radawec reproduces his own work in two of the tableaux.

Those tiny blue- and- white "contrail" paintings were part of "Act or Observe," a January show at Project Room. While they could be random views of the jet contrails against the sky, they are based on the turnaround of United 93 above Parma on Sept. 11, 2001 - another story in an exhibition full of stories.

Even the boxes themselves are art references - first to Donald Judd in their smooth-surfaced minimalism, then, in a way, to Joseph Cornell, who filled boxes with complex imagery. Radawec, however, adds narrative that wasn't presented by either Judd or Cornell.

"We're Not in Kansas Anymore" also includes three laminated wood "drawings" that mimic the boxes and, thereby, emphasize the minimalist connection and some "studies" for the boxes that remove three of the four sides to place a figure against a wall.

While they're likely necessary for Radawec to figure out how to place the little people and small paintings, the studies feel like architectural models and almost detract from the boxes because they contain no narrative or visual challenge.

Even so, "We're Not in Kansas Anymore" is an exhibition that is as entertaining as it is challenging, both fun and smart, and, if you get all the references, a good-natured critique of the art world that comes out of "The Wizard of Oz."

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 402-473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com

Douglas Max Utter, Man of Letters.

Doug's lucid and thought full art criticism in Cleveland and beyond could never be replaced and needs support right now.
As an artist in Cleveland I feel fortunate to have had such a world class and witty examiner write about my work. But most of all, I enjoyed the insights he gave me when writing about other Cleveland artists and galleries.

He has been tireless, accurate and sometimes sly while keeping this record of the Cleveland art scene alive.

Let’s not look back at his body of work and say “wow” but lend him our support and appreciation now. An extraordinary writer is in our midst, let’s let him know about it.

Matt Dibble 5-3-10


Douglas Max Utter was educated in part at Case-Western Reserve University, 1974-5, and has been self-employed as a writer and exhibiting artist since 1986. At various times he has taught painting and drawing courses at the University of Akron(1997-98), Kent State University (2001-2), and Cleveland Institute of Art (2003).

He was co-Founder and sometime editor of Angle Magazine (2003-2007), managing editor of Artefakt Magazine (2004-2005) and from 2005-2008 organized shows and publications as Exhibitions and Collections Coordinator for the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve. He began writing criticism and commentary on the arts in 1988. Since 2006 he’s written weekly reviews and commentary as art critic for Cleveland Scene Magazine (formerly the Free Times), winning awards from the Cleveland Press Club, and over the years have received two Fellowships in the area of art criticism from the Ohio Arts Council, plus one in painting. He has written several hundred reviews, articles, and catalogue essays.

Interview with Douglas Max Utter -Claudio Parentela

http://elvisinh.blogspot.com/

q)Let’s start with the basics; what's your full name, where do you live, and how old are you?

a)Douglas Max Utter

q) Do you have any formal training?

a)Some. I had several tutors as a teen. Does teaching art count as formal training? I think it should – I learned a lot from it. I’ve taught 1st and 2nd year drawing and painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art and as part of an MFA program at Kent State University, and also Advanced Painting to fourth year students at Akron University. I’ve also done a great deal of research over the past 20 years for reviews and essays I’ve written about visual art for various magazines, newspapers and museums. All these things have made a gradual difference in the way my work is focussed.

q) Did the place you grew up in influence your image making?

a)I think so. I started painting landscapes in England, near Oxford where I lived for a year when I was a boy. A little later I did some plein aire painting far to the west of Cleveland, in the corner of Iowa where my grandparents lived. Farms and abandoned buildings attracted me, and then derelict city scenes. Recently I revisited some of those subjects in a series of memory paintings and rainy cityscapes, following my mother’s death.

q) How do you come up with your concepts?

a)I sometimes paint scenes from my dreams, or from folklore or traditional biblical subjects. But even in those paintings most of my imagery is based on photographs, either news photos or my own. I don’t use actual photos as part of the physical work of art, but “draw” them in various ways, with spray paint or tar or black pastel. Conceptual content tends to grow out of the imagery and materials, not the other way around – I’m interested in the role of intuition as an agent of psychic expansion. I’m equally intrigued by the phenomenon of “presence.” I look for combinations of subject and technique that generate a sense of surprise, such as might be experienced when encountering another person in a dark room.

q) Describe your creations in a clear, concise and understandable sentence. What do you call them?

a)I call them “expressive.” I look for parallels between found imagery such as news photos, and deep psychic structures, and for techniques and materials that can serve as passageways between these.

q)What other mediums would you like to explore in your image making?

a)I’m planning some installation and video work that will incorporate painted imagery.

q)What is the best time in the day for you to work on a project? Is there one, or is it more about the environment -- maybe the right mood?

a)Whenever I have the time and the studio is warm enough. But I also work at home, usually on the dining room table, making a big mess, usually during the day because the light is better. I try to ignore my moods.

q) What are your artistic influences?...and …generally who or what influences you the most?

a)El Greco, Rembrandt, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Milton Avery, Picasso, Willem DeKooning, Francesco Clemente, Gerhardt Richter, Frank Auerbach, R. B. Kitaj. Some of these were very early, like Picasso, and others like Frank Auerbach I first became aware of after I made work that connected with theirs – after which I began to integrate aspects of their thinking with my own. There’s a lot of give-and-take in art making, I think. I also feel there’s often a particular painting I’ve encountered in the past, somewhere under each of my own works, secretly moving and motivating its imagery and technical tendencies. Sometimes I suddenly become aware of it – like, “O, it’s a Vuillard!”

q) Who are some of your favourite artists/designers/photographers?

a)Lucian Freud, William Kentridge, Marlene Dumas, Fabian Marcaccio, Julie Mehretu, Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, Amy Casey, Kasumi (video artist)

q) What is your next project?Exhibition?Collaboration?

a)Two retrospective exhibitions (which will include some new painting), one in May at the Asterisk Gallery in Cleveland, the other at The Art Seen, a converted movie theatre in Vermilion, Ohio on display Jume 1 – August 31.

q)What are your plans for the future?

a)I am very bad at plans. I hope to reinvent myself several more times.

q)Are there some web sites that You would like to recomend? Artists, art communities, xx,...!?

a)Amy Casey has a delightful website – www.amycaseypaintings.com, and my good friends, Matt Dibble – www.dibblepaintings.com, and Randall Tiedman – www.randalltiedman.com and there are other links on my website: www.douglasutter.com

q)What sort of music do you listen to?

a)I’m a big fan of classical music, especially J.S. Bach and Dmitri Shostakovitch, but also a million other composers and much contemporary music. Funk revival like Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings delights me, as well as the original R&B and Soul sounds, like the O’Jays, Bill Withers, Aretha Franklin, the Temptations. And Tom Waits, Radiohead; so many things.

q)Do you collect anything?If so what?

a)Not really. I have a bunch of brown and white Staffordshire chinoiserie-type platters and plates from the 19th century, and old books, and a few dozen paintings and prints by my friends.

q)What do you do for fun?

a)I walk or go to movies or kiss someone, or play with my daughter’s cat Spanky. And I love to travel.

q)Any advice you can pass onto aspiring artists/designers?

a)Let yourself be guided by your passions and by people who appear in your life.

q)Your contacts…

a)Are very disorganized...I don’t have a coherent list at the moment

74th Midyear Exhibition at the Butler Institute of American Art, Judge-Ronnie Landfield

I'm pleased to have this painting included in the 74th Midyear Exhibition, opening June 27th at the Butler Institute of American Art. Judged by Ronnie Landfield



The Butler Institute of American Art, located on Wick Avenue in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, was the first museum dedicated exclusively to American art. Established by local industrialist and philanthropist Joseph G. Butler, Jr., the museum has been operating pro bono since 1919. Dedicated in 1919, the original structure is a McKim, Mead and White architectural masterpiece listed on the National Register of Historic Places .

To see Ronnie Landfields paintings www.ronnielandfield.net

WOUNDED WIZARD de M.DIBBLE by Christian Schmitt

Wounded Wizard ", cette oeuvre réalisée en 2007 par Matthew Dibble, peintre américain de Cleveland, a de quoi surprendre.

Elle représente un visage humain que l’on pourrait qualifier de " prismatique " puisqu’on a l’impression de le voir à la fois de face et de profil. En effet en se juxtaposant, les deux côtés produisent un étrange effet d’optique comparable à celui d’un prisme.


Par ailleurs le visage qui apparaît sur chaque côté semble être défiguré. A gauche son profil avec un œil, une bouche de travers voire deux et ensuite à droite sa face avec également un œil, un nez et une autre bouche…A l’évidence tout cela provoque un certain trouble : la vision simultanée des deux côtés d’un visage disloqué est particulièrement angoissante d’autant qu’une troisième partie de ce puzzle semble apparaître en dessous des deux autres ?


Par bonheur la tête " unifie " le tout avec un front haut, bombé. L’individu semble être chauve à moins que les deux formes repliées à l’arrière de son crâne ne soient en réalité que les mèches de cheveux qui subsistent encore ?


En fait ce personnage étrange n’est pas unique dans l’univers de Matthew Dibble. Cet artiste a depuis des années imaginé et créé par ses dessins et ensuite par ses peintures un panthéon d’êtres monstrueux avec une apparence souvent mi humaine et mi animale dignes de la mythologie antique.


C’est pourquoi l’on peut affirmer que ce peintre de Cleveland continue en quelque sorte l’œuvre des peintres surréalistes du XX° s. A l’exemple d’un Chirico notamment, Matthew Dibble nous montre une œuvre hantée et prophétique où se déploient des forces inquiétantes.


Tout cela signifie l’irruption de l’inconscient qui fait son entrée en scène dans cette peinture. Et Matthew Dibble lui-même conforte cette analyse parlant de son œuvre comme d’une peinture d’ordre psychologique dans un courriel récent du 2/04/2010 : " This painting is psychological… "


Mais ce phénomène n’est pas nouveau puisque Marcel Duchamp voyait déjà en Courbet, le père des nouveaux peintres, l’intervention de la " main subconsciente ". Et bien évidemment aussi chez Matthew Dibble où son travail échappe à la pure raison.


Ainsi dans son oeuvre, le mystère prend corps, grâce à sa façon personnelle de présenter ce visage humain en utilisant les troubles de la perspective ou plutôt en inventant des perspectives nouvelles, dédoublées, multipliées à la façon de ce même Chirico.


Ce faisant, il force les lois de l’art, en donnant une image non pas surhumaine, mais surhumanisée … !


Quant à Chirico pour justifier sa façon de travailler, il n’hésitait pas à dire :


" Il ne faut pas oublier, qu’un tableau doit toujours marquer le reflet d’une sensation profonde, et que profond signifie étrange, et qu’étrange signifie peu connue ou tout à fait inconnue. " (Selon ses écrits pendant son séjour à Paris en 1911-1915)

Afin qu’une œuvre d’art soit vraiment immortelle, il est nécessaire qu’elle aille complètement au-delà des limites humaines. De telle façon, elle s’approchera du rêve et de l’esprit enfantin.


C’est pourquoi comme Chirico, Matthew Dibble ressent de manière similaire ce besoin de dépassement pour échapper à l’angoisse de l’homme moderne ainsi qu’à sa propre angoisse. Et ce désir de dépassement va prendre chez lui les chemins de l’étrangeté par les créatures peuplant son univers.


En cela il est fidèle également à ce que suggérait Nietzsche comme une tension nouvelle de la conscience à l’inconscient :


" Avec la force de son regard intellectuel et de sa vision de lui-même grandissant la distance et, en quelque sorte, l’espace qui s’étend autour de l’homme. Le monde devient alors plus profond, de nouvelles énigmes et de nouvelles images se présentent à la vue. " (Par-delà le Bien et le Mal, I.57)


Peut-être tout ce à quoi l’œil de l’esprit a exercé sa sagacité et sa profondeur n’a été qu’un prétexte à cet exercice, un jeu et un enfantillage. Peut-être, un jour, les idées les plus solennelles, celles qui ont provoqué les plus grandes luttes et les plus grandes souffrances, les idées de " Dieu ", du " péché ", n’auront-elles pour nous pas plus d’importance que les jouets d’enfant et les chagrins d’enfant aux yeux d’un vieillard.


Et peut-être le " vieil homme " a-t-il besoin d’un autre jouet encore et aussi d’un autre chagrin – se sentant encore assez enfant, éternellement enfant !


Ce constat pessimiste de l’homme moderne va le conduire en permanence au dépassement sans le rendre réellement heureux puisque l’angoisse existera toujours. Par conséquent pour vivre tout simplement, il a besoin de s’approcher du rêve et de l’esprit enfantin.


Chez Matthew Dibble cela prendra la forme d’un attrait particulier pour les mythes anciens.


En cela il est aussi le disciple d’un certain Jean Cocteau, le mythographe contemporain le plus célèbre. Celui-ci pour justifier sa passion écrivait sous forme de boutade :


" J’ai toujours préféré la mythologie à l’histoire parce que l’histoire est faite de vérités qui deviennent à la longue des mensonges et que la mythologie est faite de mensonges qui deviennent à la longue des vérités ".


Plus sérieusement Cocteau utilisait les mythes pour l’aider à exprimer souvent les limites de la faculté cognitive de l’homme et notamment du passage du conscient à l’inconscient (l’énigmatique sphinx de Thèbes par exemple).


Mais en réalité ici, faire appel aux mythes et à la mythologie parait moins opérant. En effet l’homme qu’il est donné de voir dans cette oeuvre semble être le peintre lui-même et par conséquent il s’agirait de son propre autoportrait !


D’ailleurs le titre de l’œuvre elle-même " Wounded Wizard " qui peut se traduire en français par " Le magicien blessé " nous donne un premier indice.


Déjà dans le courriel précité, l’artiste nous avait révélé " sa blessure " en parlant de son œuvre. Selon lui, il souffre de ne pas être l’artiste qu’il voudrait être et doute constamment de lui-même et de son œuvre.


Plus loin il est encore plus explicite en parlant d’une peinture d’ordre psychologique, " car moi-même tel que je suis j’ai du mal à me comprendre ".


L’image qu’il nous renvoie dans cette œuvre est donc bien le résultat de l’émergence de son inconscient dans la peinture et par ailleurs les défigurations infligées à son visage vont l’attester plus amplement.


Il est dans la tradition des peintres comme Picasso qui délibérément déformait le visage et le corps de ses personnages dans le seul but de mieux les connaître et les sentir (sic).


Ainsi notamment il peignit Dora Maar en femme qui pleure, défigurée et hystérique pour annoncer une catastrophe ou une situation de désespérance.


D’autres artistes ont travaillé de la même façon : Dali par la déformation pour en faire un symbole surréaliste moqueur et un Francis Bacon qui pour mieux nous faire ressortir la douleur va utiliser la figure comme un matériau brut. Et il va s’en servir en la détruisant à l’extrême pour produire une expression traumatique de l’horreur.


De même les expressionnistes comme Egon Schiele vont aussi déstructurer le corps humain aboutissant à une radicalité expressive parfois extrême (voir son autoportait).

Et sans oublier également De Kooning, qui dans sa série de portraits des Femmes, va utiliser ce même procédé. Son ami Barnett Newman justifiait cette démarche en déclarant en 1962 :


" Les gens peignaient un joli monde mais nous nous sommes aperçu que le monde n’était pas beau. La question, la question morale que nous nous posions chacun – De Kooning, Pollock, moi-même – était de savoir : que fallait-il enjoliver ? "


Fort heureusement Matthew Dibble n’a nullement l’intention d’enjoliver le monde ni d’ailleurs d’occulter son propre tourment.


Son angoisse est perceptible dans cette œuvre et elle est restituée avec beaucoup de sincérité et une grande économie de moyens. Cette oeuvre minimaliste semble plus proche d’un dessin que d’une véritable peinture.


Les trois seules teintes (le blanc, le noir et l’ocre nuancée) ne sont utilisées qu’en arrière-plan et seulement pour colorer le fond de la toile. Seul le trait noir donne vie à ce tableau : véritable poésie plastique restituée en peu de moyens !


Matthew Dibble maîtrise parfaitement le trait et réussit notamment en traçant quelques cernes autour des yeux à créer une atmosphère de profonde inquiétude.


La condensation interne compense cet apparent appauvrissement grâce à ce passage du pinceau qui se veut virtuose.


Les qualités simplicité, précision et lyrisme restituent une image pure et nette…mais tout n’est pas heureusement expliqué et donné dans cette œuvre.


La toile " Wounded Wizard " reste toujours vibrante d’énigmes !

Christian Schmitt, le 5 avril 2010.