Transient Gallery
Des Moines, IA
Mat Greiner
Three Visions is an exploration of a continuum in space. Dubin’s quiet paintings evoke a meditative depth through their layered, worked surfaces, building additional interest through their barely sculptural panel assemblies. Gardner’s work is more boisterous, expanding the vocabulary of an edgy abstract painter with constructed surfaces. While they ultimately read as internal concerns, they refuse to limit themselves to a wall space, invading or engaging the space of the viewer and demanding recognition. Kowalski’s sculptural practice shares a formal consideration in its use of color and shape, but directly engages the viewer’s space with a sense of beauty and artifice, equating personal impact with global participation.
Mat Greiner
Director, Transient Gallery
2015
 |
| Benjamin Gardner |
 |
| Dennis Kowalski |
 |
| Ken Dubin |
Ken Dubin
In this recent work I’m joining two pieces differently then I have in the past. Previously sections were butted tightly together visually reading as one work. On their own each of the sections could be seen as different paintings, but bringing them together with some reworking, would allow for the reference of a past and present; a shift from one state to another. The more recent work allows for the same references, though I’m now choosing sections made even decades apart and joining them together in a much looser manner. I think of a book or a tablet that asks to be read.As an abstract painter, spatial illusion and color are my primary materials. The Knots are a new series of low-relief paintings on wood panel that emphasize spatial complexity, making it a process to discern the hierarchy of space. As an archetype the knot has typically been used to describe traditions with sacred bonds; I wish to employ this archetype as a secular symbol of the process of binding and unbinding in my life; a sort of visual thinking about complexity in all of its forms.
Dennis Kowalski
One of my main considerations is to connect the common and domestic with the bigger world picture in an attempt to implicate the one with the other. The world and people are full of contradictions, as is my art and while being concerned about ecology and the environment, I often use materials that are synthetic and fake to make a point, but the works also contribute to the mess, thereby implicating me and perhaps most of us.