Installation View (Detail of Plank Lean Painting #2) Lawrimore Projects

When one encounters an abstract painting with goopy paint and an expressionist hand, it is still hard not to be seduced by the sheer beauty of it. But in a day when even painting has to be smart, it is always a relief to find someone making objects that make you rethink your relationship to the world, not to mention your relationship to paint itself. On view at Lawrimore Project in Seattle, Washington is new work by Vancouver-based artist, Andrew Dadson. Although an artist whose work often explores performative actions, Dadson’s new paintings seamlessly merge the beauty and seduction of painting with the defiance of painting itself. The aggressivity and expressionistic qualities of the thick colorful paint obscured by the smoothness of the warm black layer over top references the depth and emotion of Rothko’s beautiful colorfield paintings. Yet much of his work allows black to become the aggressor – obscuring or acting against the layers underneath.

To Be Titled (2010) Lawrimore Projects

What is surprising about Dadson’s work is that the obscuring  in his painting adds to the layers of meaning within his other actions. The layering in the paint actually informs his other work – giving a visual and emotive parallel to his actions – like one of his “outdoor paintings,” Black Painted Lawn with White Fence (2006), where he illegally paints someone’s lawn black. This results in the layering and obscuring in painting reaching to the obfuscation of rights and property in our culture. What is seemingly beautiful becomes something aggressive.

Black Painted Lawn with White Fence (2006)

Andrew Dadson’s work will be on view in Seattle through June 26th. He has exhibited with The Apartment and Or Gallery in Vancouver, Slaughterhousespace, in Healdsburg, California and Galleria Franco Noero, Torino, Italy. He received his BFA in Integrated Media from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver in 2003.

There’s a lot happening in Vancouver, British Columbia right now, if you hadn’t noticed. Of course, I’m talking about art. Currently on view at Monte Clark Gallery is a solo show of new work by Vancouver-born Greg Girard. The exhibition, entitled Half the Surface of the World, presents photographs taken by Girard on his visits to more than twenty US military bases across the massive area of the world known to the Pentagon as “PACOM.” PACOM is the largest of six “territorial constructs that exist solely on the Pentagon’s map of the world,” according to the exhibition’s materials, which go on to explain that “The US military influence in this region is mainly anchored with bases in Japan, Korea and Guam.” Girard, who has been living in Asia since 1983, reveals through his work how reminiscent these bases—which are home to family members as well as soldiers—are to typical Middle-American suburbs. One imagines that if you were drugged and dropped into a few of these scenes, you would be none the wiser that you were half way around the world from the birthplace of hamburgers and milkshakes. While the images are eerie, the sentiment might be the exact opposite for those who live in these locations for any length of time, as they find themselves surrounded by the consolation of “home.” However, void of any human interaction within the shots, they appear distant and industrial as they glow with the deeply saturated colors of street lamps at twilight. I’m reminded of the work of Richard Ross, both aesthetically and thematically. In a certain way they remind me most of his Waiting for the End of the World series of bomb shelters.

Greg Girard has exhibited internationally, including in multiple solo shows at Monte Clark Gallery and in group shows at Amelia Johnson Contemporary in Hong Kong, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA in Helsinki.

Jeff Ladouceur, Untitled, 2009

Currently on view at Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica is a solo show of work by New York-based artist, Jeff Ladouceur. In the exhibition, entitled Barefoot in the Head, Ladouceur’s works of ink and graphite on paper present the viewer with motley scenes of tragicomedy, rendered with exquisite craft. The absurd moments of both humor and pain stretch neatly around the gallery walls like a comic strip. In one piece, a lanky girl in worn clothes folds her body over itself; miniature white elephants fall to the floor as she scrapes a comb to the scraggly tips of her long hair. In another, a starburst-headed man trudges fantastical, smashed-face terrain, his torso displaying a series of intertwining intestines like a glass-cased museum diorama. One of his hands grasps a triplet of distressed looking men wearing matching ensembles, the other hand twists into itself, fingers knotting into one another like the series of guts on display in his stomach.

Jeff Ladouceur was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and lives and works in New York. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including recently at Zieher Smith in New York, NY; Vancouver Art Gallery in Vancouver, BC and Taché-Lévy Gallery in Brussels, Belgium. His work has been discussed in PAPER Magazine, Artweek, Frieze Magazine and Modern Painters, among other publications and newspapers.