NEW YORK, NY.- Waterhouse & Dodd, leading art dealers with four galleries in New York and London, present the gallerys first solo exhibition of paintings by Doug Argue. Ray Waterhouse, the owner, says Argue has had many previous sell-out solo shows and has developed a devoted following from many distinguished collectors which his beautiful, lyrical paintings, multi-layered in both conception and execution, certainly deserve.
The show of new works is entitled Palimpsests, and is being held at Waterhouse & Dodds Madison Avenue gallery, located across from the future Met Breuer. Palimpsests is a term used to describe augmented realities brought about by the melding of layers of material places and their virtual representations.
Argue expounds: In any given moment there is a multitude of histories. I'm using atomized letters, taken from various texts, that come from different historical moments, such as Orlando by Virginia Wolfe, fragments of writing by Heraclitus and the poems of Mark Strand, and floating them throughout the paintings like falling leaves. These letters drift through a variety of landscapes meant to evoke simple building blocks of civilization, language, water, air, bricks, books, memory, and for a painter of course color and light. All this said I work the hardest at making a painting that is simply interesting to look at, for a long, long time.
Born in 1962 in Minnesota, Argue lived in San Francisco for 10 years before moving to New York City in 2009. He is a founding member and artist in residence of Mana Contemporary, a cultural art space in Jersey City. Argues recent exhibition entitled Scattered Rhymes was comprised of four mural-sized paintings installed in the Palazzo Contarini dal Zaffo in Venice during the 2015 Venice Biennale. He was commissioned in 2009 to create two paintings for the lobby of One World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, which are now on permanent exhibition; his works can also be found in major public and private collections, including the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Walker Art Center, and the Weisman Art Museum. Argue has won several awards, including a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1995) and a Rome Prize (1997).
The exhibition features oil paintings and works on paper ranging in price from $15,000 to $150,000.