Douglas Melini @ Miles McEnery Gallery, NYC - Landscape Painting

Douglas Melini: Landscape Painting 

Miles McEnery Gallery, New York 

26 October - 9 December, 2023 

DOUGLAS MELINI

Untitled (Tree Painting-Coencentric, Magenta, Orange, Blue, Indigo), 2023 

Oil on linen and acrylic stain on reclaimed wood with artist frame 

52 x 52 inches, 132.1 x 132.1 cm

© Douglas Melini, courtesy Miles McEnery Gallery

DOUGLAS MELINI takes a radical alternative to the blank canvas, making works that are part painting, part sculpture, and part something else altogether. The linen, oil, and acrylic-stained reclaimed wood creations shatter the hierarchy of artwork and its frame; the wood elements of Douglas Melini’s paintings are not merely supplementary, but rather integral to the composition itself.

Get up close, and Douglas Melini’s patient labor and intimate understanding of his materials are revealed. As Raphael Rubenstein observes in the catalogue essay, “If you were to disentangle and stretch out the strings of paint on the linen squares, they could conceivably be used to fill in the countless thin channels and furrows that scar the surfaces of the wood panels; the countless paint strings in the center are the positive correlative to the negative fissures in the wood.” Reframing natural elements of the landscape and bringing them into the gallery space, Douglas Melini’s work successfully blurs the boundaries between art and the context in which it appears.

DOUGLAS MELINI (b. 1972) received his Bachelor of Arts from Maryland, College Park in 1994 and his Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts in 1997. He completed an artist residency at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation, Brooklyn, NY in 2012.

Douglas Melini’s work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC; Van Doren Waxter, New York, NY; Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR; Phillip Slein Gallery, St. Louis, MO; 11R, New York, NY; Eleven Rivington, New York, NY; Feature Inc., New York, NY; MINUS SPACE, New York, NY; Ursula Werz, Tubingen, Germany; Rocket Gallery, London, United Kingdom; and White Columns, New York, NY.

His work has been included in institutional group exhibitions at Abrons Art Center, New York, NY; Dallas Art Museum, Dallas, TX; Ikast Kunstpakhuset, Ikast, Denmark; International Print Center, New York, NY; Kunsthalle del Centro Cultural Andratx, Mallorca, Spain; MoMA PS1, New York, NY; RaygunLab, Toowoomba, Australia; Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR; Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY, and elsewhere.

He is the recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts’ Fellowship in Painting, Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Studio Residency and Change Inc. Grant. His work is included in the permanent collections of Daimler Art Collection, Berlin, Germany; Jill and Peter Kraus Collection, Dutchess County, NY; Neuberger Berman LLC, New York, NY; The Progressive Corporation, Cleveland, OH;  Wellspring Capital Corporation, New York, NY; and Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, New York.

Douglas Melini lives and works in New Jersey.

MILES McENERY GALLERY

515 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011

www.milesmcenery.com

Douglas Melini @ SOCO Gallery, Charlotte - Into the Woods - Paintings and Collages Exhibition

Douglas Melini: Into the Woods 

SOCO Gallery, Charlotte 

March 11 – April 24, 2020

DOUGLAS MELINI

Image courtesy of Douglas Melini and SOCO Gallery

SOCO Gallery presents “Into the Woods”, an exhibition of new works by artist DOUGLAS MELINI. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with SOCO Gallery. 

Influenced by an unlikely combination of Minimalism, pattern, and decoration, Douglas Melini investigates color, space, and the “abstract and pictorial nature of making an image”. He challenges how the audience views his works by opening up the visual space and distorting horizon lines. Adhering to the Bauhaus maxim “form follows function”, his artwork creates a pause for the viewer, allowing and encouraging a moment of contemplation.

For his exhibition, “Into the Woods”, Douglas Melini has created six paintings and twelve collage pieces. Inspired by the history of the lush tree and mushrooms grown in New Jersey Pine Barrens, the collages celebrate the cyclical and symbiotic relationships within the forest. The mushrooms, sourced from a dizzying array of field guides, are personified and presented larger than life. The vibrant and transparent watercolor connects the mushrooms to each other and to the surrounding world.

The colorful abstract paintings are constructed with reclaimed wood sourced from tobacco barns in North Carolina and feature layers of oil on linen and a textured build-up of acrylic stain and sealant. The natural material contrasts with the foraged wood to create two vastly different ways of interpreting visual spaces, one natural and one assembled. This theatrical juxtaposition further captures the viewer’s attention, establishing a portal to another world. Together, the paintings and the mushroom collages create one harmonious, natural biosphere.

DOUGLAS MELINI (b. 1972, American) received his BA from the University of Maryland in 1994 and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 1997. Douglas Melini has exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, Oregon (2018); 11R Gallery, New York, New York (2017); Feature Inc., NY, NY (2009-2014); Minus Space, Brooklyn, New York (2009); Ursula Werz, Tubingen, Germany (2005); Rocket Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2004, 1999); and Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, California (1998); among others. In 2008, Douglas Melini was awarded a Painting Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Douglas Melini’s work has been reviewed and featured in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Time Out New York, and Artcritical, and is included in private and public collections worldwide. He is represented by Van Doren Waxter, NY, NY and SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC. The artist currently lives and works in New Jersey. 

SOCO GALLERY

421 Providence Road, Charlotte, North Carolina 28207

socogallery.com

Douglas Melini @ Van Doren Waxter, New York

Douglas Melini: Starry Sky
Van Doren Waxter, New York
Through January 12, 2019

Douglas Melini 

Starry Sky #7, 2018 

Oil and acrylic on canvas with artist’s frame 

20 x 22 ½ inches (50.8 x 57.2 cm) 

Courtesy of the artist and Van Doren Waxter, New York

Van Doren Waxter presents paintings by Douglas Melini as the inaugural exhibition in the gallery’s new gallery space at 23 East 73rd Street; this newly renovated public exhibition space is an expansion on the building’s 3rd floor, adjacent to the gallery’s private viewing room. Douglas Melini: Starry Sky is the artist’s third show with the gallery. It follows the artist’s solo institutional exhibition at the Schneider Museum of Art, OR.

For this exhibition, Douglas Melini debuts a new series of paintings that merges his densely textured abstractions with the representation of a field of stars. In these chromatically charged works, pattern and saturated color become night skies, strewn and illuminated by stars. Formally rigorous, the canvases emerge from a meticulous collage process made entirely of paint; first layers of thin, nearly transparent acrylic are laid down in a lattice-like structure followed by gestural smears of oil impasto applied with a palette knife, or by hand. These thick tangles of paint become landscapes themselves transforming the work into a study of landscapes both within its materiality and its content. The paintings are then custom framed by the artist, presenting the works as deliberate objects.

Douglas Melini’s new Starry Sky paintings thoughtfully examine the abstract, pictorial, and conceptual nature of image making. In these paintings, he examines several modernist ideas about painting, including the use of the grid, the painterly surface and the painting’s objecthood. The artist also proposes ideas about light and space, both depicted and physical. The artist alludes to varied art historical references and inspirations, in particular the iconography of the night sky, including Italian frescoed ceilings depicting the heavens; saturated stained-glass windows which are illuminated from the back; the image and idea of a star as a symbol and pattern – often used as decoration and background throughout art history; and to gauge and mark the condition of night. 

Van Doren Waxter
23 East 73rd Street, New York, NY 10021
www.vandorenwaxter.com