Abstractions at Artlab

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

By Henry Sweets

Jackson hole, Wyo.-David Gottfried’s art is energizing and musical. Expressive lines and organic shapes draw the viewer in, while melded colors add harmony and structure to the paintings. The viewer explores possibilities of human experience as their eye moves through the work.

Gottfried, an artist who never wants to make a big deal of himself, calls his method “a strategy for making unexpected things happen,” because he sets guidelines for his work and then improvises within them.

The works bring to mind those of abstract expressionists like Paul Klee, Joan Mirò, and Willem de Kooning, but Gottfried does not like to compare his work with these painters.
“To the extent that this is a scientific exploration of the grammar of abstract painting, you can’t help but run into the giants of this realm,” Gottfried said. “They have discovered many of the basic building blocks of the language of abstract painting.”

If you ask Gottfried to explain what a piece means, or what emotional content drove him to paint that piece, he might just tell you how he held, twisted and moved his brush. He might explain, in earnest, the way acrylic ink dries on his brush to separate one black line into several smaller ones, and how he manipulates the process. The experience he has with the medium is the content of the work.

Like jazz, the art is in the moment. When asked if painting is a meditative experience for him, he conceded that it is a “devotional practice … kind of like church,” but only after being prodded.

His works “Trace of Black Rider” and “Flutter” were started with a wide brush dipped in black ink. The brush makes several strokes in different directions without reloading. It dashes and undulates to create space, and then crosses through that space. As the ink dries the bristles separate, becoming a group of several lines, and then 20 or 30 lines, whose unified movements display power and grace in their depleted state.
Works “Totem 1” and “Mackerel” evolved from a drawing exercise in perspective, but the precess made shapes that resemble eyes, organs, and animals that allude to myriad human emotions and experiences.

Gottfried’s show will be hanging at the Teton Artlab, 135 N.Cache #5, through March 31. Call 699-0836 for more info.

Courtesy David Gottfried
“Flutter” by David Gottfried

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