Spume

Frothy matter that forms on top of waves when the sea is rough

ePressBooks, San Francisco

DMoleskySpume_Txt.indd 1 12/9/10 12:40 PM

© David Molesky, 2010 www.davidmolesky.com

Essay: Anthony Torres [email protected]

Design: Jennifer Waryas www.jenniferwaryas.com

Printing: ePressBooks www.epressbooks.com

Cover image detail of Sliding Down Tongues

twenty-fi ve dollars


David Molesky working in his San Francisco studio


Spume: The Work of David Moleskyby Anthony Torres

David Molesky’s recent paintings represent the Sea as our source of origin, as an affi rmation that the human species depends on nature to sustain life, and as the foundation of our self-actualization and spiritual life.

The paintings of sea foam, or spume, and waves are immediately accessible and deceptively familiar. However, the images are highly complex, and can rightfully be characterized as visual emblems that speak to Molesky’s hope for quali-tatively different economic and cultural priorities that are bound to a more ecologically sound dynamic between people and nature.

The paintings evidence Molesky’s self-refl exive artistic engagement with his subject, and serve as a means of discerning how he negotiates his artistic appropriation and utilization of historically distant formal grammars to voice his individual concerns.

The paintings are personal, in that they speak to Molesky’s involvement with a specifi c subject; and universal to the extent that they allude to the idea that our indi-vidual histories with-in specifi c locations condition who we are, based on practices, identifi cations, and memories derived from various experi-ences in particular environments. This orientation situates and affi rms Molesky’s

Life of Tharmas, 2008 | oil on linen, 43 x 55 in.


belief that humans have a “universal” affi nity with each other, in that we have simi-lar biological attributes and needs that characterize the species and, like other living creatures, we must sustain ourselves in nature.

The paintings function as a form of self-affi rmation for Molesky, since he views his artistic practice as his “human” life activity, and the paintings as the “objectifi cation” of his life.

Inspired by movements of the sea in various locations, Molesky’s paintings suggest that the specifi c environments in which artists operate form the physical and social contexts that condition the content of the work.

This perhaps accounts for the images of the land and sea in both Eastern and Western traditions that extend back well over a thousand years, from ancient Greece to ancient Rome; Chinese ink paintings; history painting that situated religious and mythological narratives; through the evolution of geometric perspective that informed landscape during the Italian Renaissance; to the Dutch Golden Age painting of the 17th century; to Romanticism, that formed a complex artistic counter-response to the Industrial Revolution with the advent of industrial capitalism. However, these traditions do not wholly explain or account for the artist’s current body of work.

Nonetheless, to a certain extent, Molesky’s work does share a certain affi nity with Romanticism, and to a degree he can be considered a contemporary Romantic, since in responding to our current economic and ecological state of affairs, Molesky, like the Romantics, chooses to value emotional inspiration as a source of his aesthetic experience, venerates the power of nature, and in particular values the experiences associated with the metaphysical, aesthetic, and spiritual magnitude associated with nature.

This is evidenced in the painterly treatment of the Spume paintings, which reveal a curiosity, identifi cation, and reverence for nature, and constitute a call for honoring our environment as a means of remembering and returning to something essential to our very existences.

Here, in the representation of sea froth and oceanic water movements — swells, waves crashing, smashing into each other, and spume studies, as symbols — Molesky creates images that speak to the shifting nature and precarious instability of our existence(s). In his images of the sea, presented at times as abstracted water formations, we see the forms and structures he selects and registers on the canvas through the fl uid mobility of the brushwork, and the depiction of the subject matter as a means of capturing the


vitality of the water and its motion, particularly as it informs, and may be refl ected in, the process of painting.

In the paintings, Molesky draws parallels between these oceanic movements and cloud formations, rock formations, tree trunks and branches, wisps of angel hair, smoke, and water vapor. Such elements may appear at times biomorphic or even architectonic, and they co-exist and are infused within a unity and struggle of what Molesky calls “counter-current” forces, used in the work to relate dynamic tensions in life and nature.

All of the Spume paintings can be said to mutually inform each other, and they function together as a means of unifying various aspects of the images and their infl uence on one another. This is accomplished through a process of translating and testing different elements, painterly interactions and their compositional inter-relationships.

While the smaller paintings stand as self-contained works, they also inform and enlighten the larger works. In some cases, they directly inform particular paintings by serving as guides for the construction and organization of the larger compositions, and as components that form parts of other works. Thus, they may serve as studies or building blocks for specifi c paintings, brought to life with a subtle palette of aquamarines, translucent varied shades of greens and blues, violets, lavenders, whites and grays.

In this light, the smaller paintings may be thought of as “micro-oceanic” elements in an ongoing “working out” process that functions as a means of forming ideas and absorbing the subject, in an ingestion process based in the interactive relationship between the artist, his chosen medium, and the subject matter.

Thus, the smaller works can serve as anchoring devices and as subtexts for the whole body of work. The interactions between forms, colors, and structures, and the interrelationships between individual paintings, serve to create a complementary tension and unity among the various works.

In the paintings, the marks reference both a site-specifi c encounter with the Sea and the acquisition and application of knowledge gained from Molesky’s painterly activity. In a general sense, the paintings demonstrate the processes by which Molesky refi nes his ideas in an effort to integrate knowledge gained from previous observations and engagements.


The paintings thus speak to the personal character of the artist, and the multi form ways in which the paintings serve as condensations of past observations, as painterly events, and as translations of an ideological orientation or position. The paintings are also a general account of his refl ections on canvas, and evidence a struggle for clarity in a quest to develop and expand his visual vocabulary.

The paintings are inte-grally related to a gestation of ideas, formal structures, and visual strategies aimed at engaging the viewer, within a dynamic painterly space, via devices designed to set up compositional fl ows to facilitate appreciation of an image. The manner in which Molesky pursues his artistic investigations references the way he seeks and negotiates interrelationships between himself and his subject(s) through an ongoing painterly process of reworking elements, and this strategy creates visual drama through dynamic tensions in representing a seemingly common and familiar subject.

The experiences and exposures that inform his most recent paintings create a constellation of personal iconographic water “stills,” realized through his ongoing investigations of organic fi guration and formal interrelationships.

To a certain degree, the works could be accurately described as symbolic allegories in which the artist takes an ideological stance regarding what should ultimately be valued, and his aspiration for a greater social awareness of the signifi cance of nature.

This is made visible through processes of exploring, reclaiming, and transforming fl ows and structures of the ocean in order to construct visual emblems that speak to self-determination, social redemption and responsibility. The images thus represent a

Dosey Doe, 2008 | oil on linen, 18 x 21 in.


Slid

ing

Dow

n To

ngue

soi

l on

linen

, 201

050

x 8

5 in

. / 1

27 x

216

cm


Etheric Impulseoil on linen, 201041 x 53 in. / 105 x 135 cm


Punch Bowloil on linen, 201047 x 55 in. / 120 x 140 cm


Passing Breakersoil on linen, 200939 x 43 in. / 100 x 110 cm


Rogueoil on canvas, 200936 x 48 in. / 92 x 122 cm


Spume Scapeoil on canvas, 200936 x 48 in. / 92 x 122 cm


Foam Scape oil on canvas, 2006 20 x 24 in. / 51 x 61 cm


Cream Tops oil on canvas, 200920 x 24 in. / 51 x 61 cm


Ruptureoil on panel, 201016 x 20 in. / 41 x 51 cm


Bubble Gum Popoil on panel, 201018 x 24 in. / 46 x 62 cm


Spilling into the Voidoil on canvas, 201030 x 48 in. / 76 x 122 cm


Micro Study in Blueoil on board, 201024 in. / 61 cm in diameter


Micro Study in Magentaoil on board, 201024 in. / 61 cm in diameter


Harvest the Excessoil on canvas, 201040 in. / 102 cm in diameter


Sea Spume #3oil on panel, 200930 x 40 in. / 76 x 102 cm


Sea Spume #2oil on panel, 2009 30 x 40 in. / 76 x 102 cm


Cetusoil on canvas, 201026 x 32 in. / 66 x 81 cm


Glasstopsoil on linen, 2008 20 x 28 in. / 51 x 71 cm


Foamscape Study #2oil on board, 20089 x 12 in. / 24 x 32 cm


Splash #5oil on panel, 200916 x 18 in. / 41 x 46 cm


Sleeperoil on canvas, 200932 x 43 in. / 81 x 109 cm


personal social statement and an ethical position that functions as a form of veneration, which articulates that nothing can be created without nature, and only through nature are our existences possible.

This identifi cation situates Molesky’s work within a legacy of concern with landscape,environment, and place. This tradition, with which Molesky’s work can be associated, serves as a visual reservoir for the artist, and forms an enduring and integral part of contemporary artistic engagement. Whether one chooses to historically view the tradition(s) of land-scape painting and images of the Sea as subjective responses to human existence within particular land-scapes at given times, or as concerned with the development of a landed bourgeoisie and a glorifi cation of nature as private property, or the landscape tradition as refl ecting a colonial mentality based on the construction of theo-logical or nationalist sentiment, or a roman-ticized tool of frontier expansion, or a nostalgic longing for a lost state of innocence in the face of industrialized urbanization — here, it functions as a means of projecting a call for the human species to live in greater harmony with the universe, represented through the practice of consuming infl uences and lessons from diverse historical and aesthetic exposures in a process of (re)articu-lation in the work.

The paintings should thus be thought of as position statements that speak of a desire for homeostasis, in which the species is more integrally connected to nature and each

Foamscape Study, 2008 | oil on board, 9 x 12 in


other. In other words, the paintings speak to a projection for a relatedness that is both personal and universal, via images that are both familiar and accessible.

In our present context, the Spume paintings should be viewed as concerned with a fundamental relationship between the body and its environment, and with the specifi city of the micro environments in which bodies are located, in relation to a complex macro environment that is increasingly defi ned and overwhelmed by a metaculture of post-industrial capitalism that consolidates, disseminates, and extols the cultural values of commodity production and consumption.

Indeed, it should not be surprising that in a social context defi ned by alienation, reifi cation, and environmental exploitation, which creates landscapes fi lled with poverty and despair, that we fi nd an artist concerned with the environment and our place in it, and a romantic exaltation of nature through images of the sea.

In fact, it seems only natural that a contemporary painter might return to images from nature, since many of the terms that form an integral part of the vocabulary of contemporary aesthetic discourse are concerned with a sense of “place” and location within various landscapes. Terms such as mapping, dislocation, marginalization, periphery displacement, border art, outsider art, are all related to “space” within various internal (subjectively experienced) or external landscapes, real or imagined, domestic or geographical.

Given that the world currently faces unprecedented environmental degradation that threatens everything and everyone, it is perhaps symptomatic of the times that a contemporary painter would re-evaluate and construct images of the Sea as contemporary social statements, as a means of questioning the demands of unbridled capitalist accumulation and its potential for mass human detriment through ecological disaster.

In so doing, David Molesky’s work affi rms a desire for a connectedness to nature through a humanizing artistic labor practice, and a sensuous demand that nature be resituated at the forefront of thinking, by means of his “iconic” socially conscious emblems that prioritize honoring and respecting nature, and serve as a form of cultural agency for the defense of the planet.


David MoleskyBorn 1977 in Washington, D.C. Moved to the West Coast in 1995Lives and Works in San Francisco

Solo Exhibitions:

2010 Turbulent Mirror, Rae Douglass Gallery, Berkeley, CA ODD, Malonga Casquelourd Arts Center, Oakland, CA Splash, Serpentine, San Francisco, CA Spume, Canessa Gallery, San Francisco, CA2007 Equinox, Terrence Rogers Fine Art, Santa Monica, CA Radhus, Tønsberg, Norway2005 Recent Landscapes, Las Fuentes Villa, Carmel Valley, CA State of Being, Municipal Building, Raleigh, NC2004 Pan in Arcadia, Lisa Coscino Gallery, Pacifi c Grove, CA2002 Recent Painting, Faculty Club, Berkeley, CA2001 Poetics of Dream, Karpeles Museum, Charleston, SC Psychologic Paint, Gamil Gallery, Raleigh, NC2000 Seven Years, Gallery A, Raleigh, NC

Group Exhibitions:

2011 Suggestivism, Grand Central Art Center, California State Fullerton, Santa Ana, CA2010 Aqua: Art on Water, Artzone 461, San Francisco, CA A History of Flight, Terrence Rogers Fine Art, Santa Monica, CA Empty Time, the fridge Gallery, Washington, D.C. 100 Artists See Satan, Grand Central Art Center, Cal State Fullerton, Santa Ana, CA Delicious, Studio Gallery, San Francisco, CA2009 The Genesis of Bay Area Figurative Art Now, Art Space 712, San Francisco, CA Kitsch mer enn kunst, Telemarksgaleriet, Nottoden, Norway On the Bay in Monterey, Monterey Peninsula Yacht Club, Monterey, CA Point Lobos Project, Fine Art Base, Sand City, CA2008 400 Meter Kunst, Voss, Norway Kitsch Biennale, Pasinger Fabrik, Munich, Germany2007 Kitsch, Galleri KS, Tønsberg, Norway Intimate Landscape, Sesnon Gallery, University of California, Santa Cruz2006 All Wet, Lisa Coscino Gallery, Pacifi c Grove, CA2005 Auto Show, Charles Campbell Gallery, San Francisco, CA My California, National Steinbeck Center, Salinas, CA


2004 Art of the Mediterranean Games, Italian Institute of Culture, San Francisco, CA Objects of Obsession, Lisa Coscino Gallery, Pacifi c Grove, CA Context, Lisa Coscino Gallery, Pacifi c Grove, CA2002 Recent Paintings, Faculty Club, UC Berkeley Campus, Berkeley, CA2001 Winners’ Circle, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD

Education:2006 - 2008 Apprentice to Odd Nerdrum, Norway in Iceland and France1995 - 1999 University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California Bachelor of Arts, Dept. of Art Practice & Premed with an emphasis in Neurobiology1992 – 1995 Studied with Plein Air painter, Walter Bartman

Selected Travel And Residencies:2009-2010 Honorary Artist in Residence Award at Monterey Peninsula Yacht Club, Monterey, CA2009 May Artist in Residence, Fine Art Base, Sand City, CA2008 Summer-Winter Studio in Vienna, Austria Late Spring Artist in Residence, Fundacia Nakjelska, Naklo Palace, Poland Spring Artist Retreat, Jackowo Dolne, Poland2008/2007 Winter Studio, Maison Lafi tte, France2006-2007 Resident Artist/Assistant, Odd Nerdrum Studio Reykjavik, Iceland and Stavern, Norway2006 Studio in Silverlake, Los Angeles California2003-2005 Studio in Carmel, California2002-2004 Studio in Seattle, Washington1999 Summer Studio Rome, Italy and visits to London

Selected Press:New Amercian Paintings: Pacifi c Coast Edition, #91. 2011Surf Story Vol 2. Robb Havassy. 2011Kitsch Mer Unn Kunst. Odd Nerdrum. 2010Spoor, Nathan. “David Molesky.” Juxtapoz Magazine Website. November 2, 2009Juxtapoz Magazine Website. Link to my video “Making Foam” May 7, 2009Spoor, Nathan. “Master & Apprentice Part I & Part II.” ISM Magazine. Spring 2008/issue 14, p. 12-15 Fauntleroy, Gussie. 21 Under 31. Southwest Art Magazine. September 2007, p.135 Galuska, Frank. Intimate Landscape. October 2006, p.29 Watson, Lisa Crawford. “WaterWorks.”Go! The Monterey County Herald, March 30-April 5, 2006Gangelhoff, Bonnie. Artists to Watch. Southwest Art Magazine. September 2005, p.30 Deragon, Rick. “Be Still My Heart.” Monterey County Weekly. February 2004, p.4Bible, Adam. Gallery. Spectator, September 6-12, 2000


Spume

Documents

Transcript of Spume