Jason Middlebrook: Drawing Time

David B. Smith Gallery is pleased to present Jason Middlebrook’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, Drawing Time. Middlebrook has long explored man’s complex relationship with nature by painting bright abstractions across the surface of cut planks and slices of indigenous hardwoods. This exhibition will feature his symbiotic dichotomy of man and nature with a series of his plank paintings and wall works. Sourced locally to his home in upstate New York, timber is cut into lengths and slices left raw to highlight the organic quality of the material. The wooden canvases once had a life of their own as evidenced by the many rings of “compressed energy” (JM 2013) radiating across the surface. Middlebrook pays deference to this record of history by laying a skin of brightly colored lines and shapes, a final layer of life celebrated by human intervention. Raw edges, whorls, and burls exaggerate the exacting geometry in his abstraction. Kaleidoscopic repetitive sequences guide the eye in and out of the grain, complementing the work nature already produced instead of obscuring it. Reminiscent of geodes or geological cross-sections, these works speak to a higher sublime quality of man’s interaction with all nature—its presence before man and our brief visitation in its space. The works rest within the continuum of art history, visually referencing preeminent abstractionist shaped canvases of the 20th century and Op Art in his monochromatic works. The planks also call to mind the monoliths of a certain California minimalism. The weightiness of the wooden slices and the floor-to-wall installation of the planks assert these works as both paintings and three-dimensional objects. Thus creating a relationship between viewer and object that is both visual and physical. Drawing Time strikes a chord with the viewer offering an opportunity to experience nature’s timelessness and the momentary beauty made possible by human gesture.