David Huffman - Tribulations
Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco
April 1 - May 15, 2004
Patricia Sweetow Gallery presents the paintings of David Huffman in his exhibition of new paintings, Tribulations. This exhibition is in conjunction with the University of Santa Clara, de Saisset Museum exhibition, Dark Matter: The Art of David Huffman, April 17 - August 1, 2004.
Bay Area artist DAVID HUFFMAN (b.1963), has expressed his idiosyncratic universe of Traumabot's, and Trauma Smiles in an unfolding epic of violence as the cultural norm. The cataclysmic conflicts portrayed in his paintings metaphorically parallel our nation/state, religious, racial and personal tragedies. His language is one of alienation and urgency, where characters that are marked with the Minstrel's smile exist in an environment of isolation fearing phenomena that are of their own making.
Although the paintings graphically depict a culture of apprehension, David Huffman's palette and brushwork seduce the viewer with a surface of muted tones, watermarks that dissolve in a mat, powdered surface of liquid atmosphere. Roberta Smith, art critic for the New York Times, wrote of Huffman's paintings in a November 28 review of The Studio Museum in Harlem recent exhibition Blackbelt "David Huffman's paintings of black astronauts and action figures drifting in surfaces of soft, smoky plumes and swirls suggest a familiarity with Chinese landscape painting and supply one of the show's few sensuous moments".
Through interviews, reviews, essays and statements, David Huffman's work has been discussed and written about in many publications." In the exhibition catalog of Freestyle, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Eungie Joo writes, "Imagine traveling to the outskirts of infinity to arrive in a Journey to the Center of the Earth-territory of bodily space, replete with internal organs, digestive gases, and glandular operations. The organs can process disease, infection and sorrow. They are awareness...."In comparison, Huffman articulates his ideas through his paintings, often demanding the viewer draw their own conclusions about influence and substance. "By recontectualizing the minstrel into super-robots, the concentration has been intellectual and material accomplishments, thus leading to a soul-less spiritual crisis. Their sense of self has become an artifact from denial of self, from obsessive material success, all cast and proffered by others. Although the stereotype of caricature has been removed, the Trauma smiles continue to inhabit the mask of the minstrel."
David Huffman's work is represented in public and private collections.
PATRICIA SWEETOW GALLERY
49 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94108
