NEW YORK, NY.- For its inaugural 2016 exhibition, Hionas Gallery presents Dennis Hollingsworth: Paint sculpturally / sculpt Painterly. Hollingsworth unveils here a series of new and recent sculpture, including one large-scale, comprised of oil paint that has been fitted onto custom wood armatures. The dates of exhibited works range from 2008-2015. The exhibition will run from January 7 to February 6, 2016.

In a clear evolution of the artist’s signature manipulation of oil into sculptural forms, Hollingsworth ascends from the canvas surface (with two exceptions) to create freestanding, three-dimensional paintings that read as sculpture. The results are wondrous concoctions, each encased in a vitrine as a delicate curio, whose naturalistic qualities are countered by Hollingsworth’s adventurous combinations and applications of pigment.

When paint dries the painting ends. Hollingsworth embraces this notion of limits and with it, he seeks to find the life within impasto paint. To levitate the paint further above the canvas, the supports that were once panel and stretcher become the sculpture’s armature. In doing so he demonstrates not only a masterly understanding of the elemental components of his medium and what it can accomplish, but also a desire to watch the natural order of things surmount their own weight, chemistry, and penchant for disorder. The vitrines in which Hollingsworth encloses his works can be seen as a protective covering, a space helmet, a means to preserve life, retard entropy, and let nature both take and not take its course.

The dabs, tongues, and urchin-like monads of oil that Hollingsworth employs in his paintings are likewise the building blocks for his armatured oil sculptures. This crossover communicates a painterly approach to sculpture, one wherein the paint performs according to the artist’s specifications, but the final forms retain the ability to surprise even their maker. According to Hollingsworth, “Maybe it’s the architect in me, with the ‘nature of materials’ instinct that architects naturally have, that I would be so inclined to paint sculpturally … and now sculpt painterly.”

Dennis Hollingsworth received his MFA from the Claremont Graduate School in 1991. He has exhibited widely throughout Europe and the U.S., with solo exhibitions at Galerie Pelaires, Palma de Mallorca; Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo; Galerie Miguel Marcos, Barcelona; and Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles. He lives and work in New York City and Tossa del Mar, Spain. Paint sculpturally / sculpt Painterly is Hollingsworth’s second solo exhibition with Hionas Gallery.