"SURFACE TENSION"
GUY DENNING • DAVID WALKER
JUNE 10 - JULY 12
Opening: June 12, 7-10pm
Musical Guest: DJ REKHA

REQUEST A PREVIEW: info(at)BrooklyniteGallery.com
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Who knew some artists' equated painting a picture on a surface
with a bare-fisted street brawl? A tension-filled, back and forth
struggle between their medium and tools all while producing visual
ideas with an often far different meaning from what your eyes are
actually seeing.

One could argue that, "Surface Tension", the new exhibition from
Guy Denning and David Walker, two artists, who through the
human form, explore two different concepts, using two entirely
different techniques, should be aptly billed as "Guy Denning vs.
David Walker". "Surface Tension" aims to explore the stress that
festers behind the processes of creation and the battles won and
lost between an artist and his medium. The show also revisits that
old cliché about how painting is all about the external expression
of the inner processes of art and the artist.

Wielding brushes and knives, Guy Denning battles a myriad of ideas
that stir around in ones head in the hope that the visual translation
might become the remedy. These disparate thoughts that don't connect
to anyone or anything in particular, yet continue to reoccur, are
expressed through precarious self-portraits and female figures who at
times are featured in crude, semi-abandoned locations. Behind layers
of oil paint and turpentine, it would appear upon near completion,
Denning's work was then forcefully blasted in one direction with a
fire-hose. His work has all the makings of a piece by a classically
trained painter, yet the added angst of a back street fist-fight.
According to a past journal entry, Denning states, "Any narrative is
at best buried beneath the layers of fragmented visual metaphor and
allegory". One can then only assume that Denning's subjects, such as
soldiers pointing Browning heavy machine-guns in a sub-basement,
women struggling with sexuality and self-portraits that appear to be
anything but, are in part speaking possibly about... "unattainable goals"?
In the end, as Denning puts it... "It all seems to go round in circles".

For David Walker, much of this "Surface Tension" is self-inflicted. The
gestural approach Walker uses when creating his alluring female portraits
can only be achieved using a self-imposed rule of "no brushes, only
spray-paint" techniques. Up until this exhibition, Walker also abstained
from using a color palette other than black, white and pink. For now he's
trashed that rule and instead explores a diverse and at times clashing
range of hues and metallics, giving a nod to the days of 'acquiring' spray
paint from wherever you could and using what you had on hand, which
results in refreshing and off-key color combinations. There is also further
exploration into abstract tagging and photo-realism, all executed in layer
upon layer of spray paint. For Walker, the subject of his work inherently
lies in the facial expression-- just the right one that is. Using found
imagery pillaged from peoples photo albums, snapshots and old
magazines, Walker is in constant search of a precise emotion or tilt of the
head that evokes a visceral response and can expand the distance
between his work and that of an intelligible portrait artist.

Both artists will continue to travel on different paths leading up to their
joint exhibition here, where they will finally come together to not only
display work on canvases, but also in mural form on the walls of our
outdoor space and elsewhere.

Brooklynite Gallery is located at 334 Malcolm X Blvd.,
Brooklyn, New York 11233.

We are open Thursday thru Saturday from 1pm – 7pm or by appointment.
We are located 2 blocks from the A or C subway to Utica Ave. stop.