VIENNA.- Kovacek Contemporary (Spiegelgasse 12, 1010 Vienna) is the first gallery in Europe to present the New York City-based artist Doug Argue.

Both the dynamic and the effect of depth play an important role in Doug Argue’s art. His style is defined by large formats and intensive colors. Biomorphic shapes are just as much part of his Oeuvres as geometric, moving or seemingly unstable surfaces. Finally, his art is characterized by illusion, abstraction and coloring on the one hand, and the ability to discuss critical topics on the other. Culled from literary classics such as Moby-Dick to sonnets by thirteenth century poet Petrarch, Argue’s atomized texts are inspired by psycholinguistic and scientific phenomena. Argue has developed an interest in literature at the early stages of his career: “The Chicken” (1994), a well-known monumental painting which depicts thousands of locked-up chickens, is partially based on Franz Kafka’s story “Forschungen eines Hundes”, in which a dog thinks about the many ways the earth gains its food.

The artist explores abstraction syntactically: paragraphs, sentences, and words compose and decompose into one another, until they are only discrete letters. They are not meant to be read but rather to be perceived as visual chords which take over spatial or rhythmic functions and hover, stretch, twist and dance in masses across the surface. He creates a story with each symbol until his captivating compositions finally set free a new visual language filled with energy and colors. His pictures often consist of layers of powerful brushwork and highly defined stencil letters which cover the canvas in a mesh-like design and suggest not only time, light and movement but also the way the past influences the present. His painting technique is characterized by the fine line between precision and artistic gesture.

“There are many different histories in the world, in both art and politics, and we often see things in the current moment, yet have no idea what lies beneath. One language is always turning into another, one generation is always rising and another falling, there is no still moment. I am trying to express this flux—this constant shifting of one thing over another, like a veil over the moment itself.”

Argue’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including at the Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, and in New York, Edelman Arts and Haunch of Venison. Most recently, two of his paintings were commissioned for the lobby of One World Trade Center in Manhattan. His work is held in the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Walker Art Center, Weisman Art Museum, and numerous corporate and private collections.