Alex Dodge, Tom Laduke We Contain Multitudes

New York, NY: Miles McEnery Gallery, 2022. paperback. Very Good. 0x0x0. Minor shelf wear, binding tight, pages clean and unmarked. Moffitt declares, “Few painters appear to be as different as Alex Dodge and Tom LaDuke. Dodge’s crisply rendered, rumpled patterns, stenciled so that they acquire the texture of their referent fabrics, have a unique physical presence that invites our touch. By contrast, LaDuke’s juxtaposition of abstract gestures–some brushed impasto, others poured or stenciled–atop foggy, inscrutable landscapes seem to place the physical world just out of reach, as if behind a pane of steamed glass. Both painters, however, achieve their results through a precise methodology that filters the material through the digital and then back out onto the analog surface of a canvas. Much of their work develops in the virtual space of Blender, a 3D computer graphics software program that synthesizes drawings and provides the tools to distort them.”LaDuke’s paintings are painstakingly constructed, offering multiple layers to absorb, with their own references and meanings. The works situate the viewer in an illusory middle dimension, suspended between many levels of imagination. Forms tend to be screened, stacked, and occluded among layers of fused, brightly colored impasto brushstrokes. The paintings encourage viewers to cautiously examine and reorient themselves in a world where both the real and unreal coalesce.Dodge’s paintings blur the line between real and imagined, the digital and the analog, leaving the viewer with an in- between realm, neither here nor there. The artist begins with a hand drawing, either in pencil or charcoal, to get the basic form of his image, and, from there, he generates a 3D-rendered model. Once satisfied with the computer image, Dodge translates his creation with laser-cut stencils to apply thick paint in small sections by hand–exploring the dialogue between the physical and virtual world.Seeking to rethink what is possible in painting, LaDuke and Dodge produce works that are liberated from broad generalizations and delve into the present moment where life unfolds. Their work begins in the digital space and offers vastly different views of virtual dreams that are each sincerely rendered and manifested in the analog with paint on canvas.