• Douglas C. Bloom
    Sea of People, 2010
    Oil on canvas
    48 x 60 inches

Douglas C. Bloom & Darren Waterston

February 19—April 2, 2011


Carrie Secrist Gallery is pleased to announce Douglas C. Bloom & Darren Waterston, two solo exhibitions of new paintings.

In his current work, Douglas C. Bloom searches for new pictorial solutions by bridging the representational and the abstract. Either in balance or discord, he is attempting to orchestrate a breakdown of traditional formal design elements, while also using the strengths of each mode of painting as a foundation for his painting. By manipulating the medium Bloom constructs “images that materialize and dissolve simultaneously,” referencing cinema and nostalgia. He destroys the painterly-ness of the pictorial surface to produce photograph-like images. For Bloom, this action is a metaphor for the metamorphosis of traditional painting methodologies into something new, in turn referring to the rise of contemporary art, which is often established upon the transmission of ideas from previous art movements.  The actual imagery, taken from the art world, directly correlates with Bloom’s notions of bridging the history of painting with contemporary painting principles.

Darren Waterston’s paintings explore fantastical landscapes, while leaving the natural world behind in order to create abstract, other worldly spaces populated by non-representational forms that refer as much to the materials with which they are created as to any actual existing natural phenomena. The paintings reflect the artist’s interest in the geological, the botanical and the celestial without delineating any specific or recognizable form. Exploring our existence within the chaos of all natural processes, the paintings exhibit a continuous push and pull between construction and destruction; building up and tearing down, both within physical and psychological realms.

Douglas C. Bloom lives and works in Los Angeles, California and received his MFA from Claremont Graduate University. Group exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA; Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, St. Louis, MO; and the Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA. Bloom has been chosen to be a part of New American Paintings both in 2003 and 2006 and has been reviewed in LA Weekly and the Los Angeles Times.

Darren Waterston was born in California in 1965 and received his BFA at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. He continued his training in Germany studying painting at the Academie der Kunst in Berlin and the Fachhochschule fur Kunst in Munster. He has previously been the recipient of the Richard C. Diebenkorn Teaching Fellowship at the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship in Umbertide, Italy, where he was an artist in residence in 2005. Waterston’s paintings, watercolors and murals have been exhibited internationally and are included in many permanent collections, such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, CA, the Oakland Museum of California, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA, and the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon. Waterston lives and works in New York, NY.

 

 

 

Images

  • Douglas C. Bloom
    Highest Bidder    , 2008
    Oil on canvas
    48 x 60 inches


  • Douglas C. Bloom
    Repose    , 2010
    Oil on canvas
    36 x 36 inches

  • Douglas C. Bloom
    Assessment    , 2010
    Oil on canvas
    24 x 30 inches

  • Douglas C. Bloom
    Rotation    , 2010
    Oil on canvas
    15 x 18 inches

  • Douglas C. Bloom
    Origin    , 2011
    Oil on canvas
    15 x 18 inches

  • Douglas C. Bloom
    Unknown    , 2010
    Oil on canvas
    24 x 34 inches

  • Douglas C. Bloom
    Field Trip    , 2010
    Oil on canvas
    20 x 60 inches

  • Douglas C. Bloom
    Queue,     2011
    Oil on canvas
    10 x 23 inches

  • Darren Waterston
    Veil, 2008
    Oil on wood panel
    24 x 18 inches

  • Darren Waterston
    Agnos No. 3, 2008
    Oil on wood panel
    24 x 18 inches

  • Darren Waterston
    Sensual Flourish, 2006
    Oil on wood panel
    48 x 36 inches

  • Darren Waterston
    Five Oblivions 1, 2007
    Oil on oval wood panel
    12 x 16 inches

  • Darren Waterston
    Five Oblivions 3, 2007
    Oil on oval wood panel
    12 x 16 inches

  • Darren Waterston
    Five Oblivions 4, 2007
    Oil on oval wood panel
    12 x 16 inches

  • Darren Waterston
    Five Oblivions 5, 2007
    Oil on oval wood panel
    12 x 16 inches