Tangential Relations exhibit debuts
EUC art gallery once again astounds viewers with unconventional exhibition
Jared Watson
Issue date: 10/6/09 Section: Arts & Entertainment
The work is largely an exploration of objects common to the artist's personal life. Recurrent objects like a Jeep, a house, and various pieces of text all come from the artist's day to day existence; here fused together in an expansive wall-to-wall and ceiling-to-ceiling matrix of color and form. Every wall is heavily layered with shapes, objects, or artifacts, sometimes painted over with saturated, day-glo acrylic paint. Even the windows, an often visual respite in most galleries, are blocked by ceiling to floor mobile-esque painted squares that serve to lend an overall impression to the casual viewer of a brutal assault of color.
Modler, was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland and received a Bachelor of Science and Masters of Education degree at Towson State University in Maryland. He taught fine arts for 10 years in Loudoun County, Virginia and for 5 years in Perquimans County, North Carolina before focusing on studio practice in 2003. In 2006 he returned to graduate school for drawing and painting at James Madison University in Virginia. Currently he is an art faculty member at Appalachian State University and from October 22 to 25 he will present at the North Carolina Art Education Association Conference in Winston-Salem. He is also a co-author of the book Journal of Junkies Workshop: Ammunition for the Art Addict, to be released in May of 2010.
Around the gallery are shelves of sketchbooks which are thematically and conceptually related to what's on the walls. The artist, David Modler, views sketchbooks not as a blueprint for larger works or as a diary for what's to come, but as art in and of themselves. The sketchbooks are as equally important to documentation of his personal life as documented in the larger works. Modler says, "I see my work as an ever-evolving process; each painting and journal volume is a spontaneous but not random document of this daily activity." The only major difference between his paintings and sketchbooks seems to be that of consumption, where the viewer is able to consume pages of his sketchbooks at their leisure. On the other hand, this is impossible with the wall pieces, as the viewer is "…surrounded and consumed by the bombardment of information."
Another major exploration evident in the work is materiality and obsession with the surface. "I enjoy…exploring a variety of surface materials", he says. His work includes fragments from promotional materials, garbage from Starbucks, and bits and pieces of wood which, taken as a whole, explore the surface of painting when it's both built up and taken away.
Modler, was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland and received a Bachelor of Science and Masters of Education degree at Towson State University in Maryland. He taught fine arts for 10 years in Loudoun County, Virginia and for 5 years in Perquimans County, North Carolina before focusing on studio practice in 2003. In 2006 he returned to graduate school for drawing and painting at James Madison University in Virginia. Currently he is an art faculty member at Appalachian State University and from October 22 to 25 he will present at the North Carolina Art Education Association Conference in Winston-Salem. He is also a co-author of the book Journal of Junkies Workshop: Ammunition for the Art Addict, to be released in May of 2010.
Around the gallery are shelves of sketchbooks which are thematically and conceptually related to what's on the walls. The artist, David Modler, views sketchbooks not as a blueprint for larger works or as a diary for what's to come, but as art in and of themselves. The sketchbooks are as equally important to documentation of his personal life as documented in the larger works. Modler says, "I see my work as an ever-evolving process; each painting and journal volume is a spontaneous but not random document of this daily activity." The only major difference between his paintings and sketchbooks seems to be that of consumption, where the viewer is able to consume pages of his sketchbooks at their leisure. On the other hand, this is impossible with the wall pieces, as the viewer is "…surrounded and consumed by the bombardment of information."
Another major exploration evident in the work is materiality and obsession with the surface. "I enjoy…exploring a variety of surface materials", he says. His work includes fragments from promotional materials, garbage from Starbucks, and bits and pieces of wood which, taken as a whole, explore the surface of painting when it's both built up and taken away.
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