Dani Tull "Take a Single Letter from the Stream"
The compositions in these paintings appear to be subject to the forces of gravity-- the earth element that keeps us on the ground able to sustain and propagate life, or alternately, gravity makes things fall apart. The forms in Tull’s paintings lean, support, and navigate the space and negotiate complex relationships, much like organic lifeforms and human interrelations. The compositions ultimately work towards what Tull refers to as “self-correcting forms” -- always striving toward equilibrium while arching against collapse.
In the process of painting, the artist encountered a Tabula rasa (or clean slate) upon which he meticulously inscribed the underpainting in graphite with personal texts as well as poetry by various writers (including friends and family members). These lettered layers are painted over and are intentionally obscured.
The exhibition will offer nearly twenty paintings presented in two groupings: earlier works with dramatic luminous backgrounds painted in oil on canvas and recent works in which raw linen is stained with dynamic layers of loosely spilled washes of paint. Both backgrounds set the stage for Tull’s narratives.
Through a generative process, a repetition of pinstripe lines is hand-painted in flashe and accumulate into what Tull refers to as “streams.” The color combinations chosen for the streams have been derived from meaningful life experiences and suspended in these forms and on the surfaces of the paintings like trace artifacts. For example, within a single canvas, one stream of colors is derived from Tull’s memory of an event he does not have a photograph of, or his late grandfather’s vintage flannel shirt; others are the colors of his wife and daughter’s hair, or Tull’s own teenaged psychedelic memory of watching the sun setting during an outdoor concert on a California beach. Others borrow from artwork: the color palette from a landscape painting by the artists’ mother or colors from Tull’s previous bodies of work. These meaningful life experiences offer source material while embedding the abstractions with inherent sentimental narrative.
The foundation of Dani Tull’s process may be subtle and personal, however the completed paintings resolve as an exciting interplay between materials and process, formalist explorations and considered abstraction.
Press release and images via Diane Rosenstein Gallery, LA.
