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PRESS RELEASE
Paul Booker
Current
November 17 - December 16, 2006
Opening Reception For The Artist, Friday, November 17, 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Dunn and Brown Contemporary is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Paul Booker. This exhibition marks Booker's first solo exhibition with the gallery and will open with a reception for the artist on Friday, November 17, 6:00 - 8:00 PM.
Since completing his MFA at the University of North Texas, Booker has distinguished himself with his intricate and obsessively detailed three dimensional pinned wall installations. However, for this exhibition, Booker has created a completely new body of work in a new medium for the artist. Guided by the principles of his earlier work, these new paintings explore a similar dense layering of small drawn parts much like his pinned works. However, as Booker has moved from three dimensional work to two dimensional work, the scale of each composition has increased dramatically, and the visual play of depth and movement has increased in complexity. The process begins as Booker repeatedly paints hand drawn forms separated by multiple layers of polyurethane and more painted forms, thereby creating an actual physical depth to the painted surface of each abstract composition.
Driven by a longstanding interest in fluid dynamics, Booker continues to study the subtlety of currents and patterned movement. Ranging from the rhythm of the ocean to the formation and dissolution of clouds, Booker interprets the intricacies of these fluid movements when creating the compositions for his paintings. The individual paintings gradually transform themselves from a solid colored background into structures whose shapes appear to be constantly growing and multiplying upon themselves. Using a digital simulator on the computer, Booker finds his inspiration from the shapes created by the aftermath of smoke blown into the computer screen. A still photograph of this movement becomes the starting ground for the fluid pattern of rectangles that make up the composition and subject matter of the painting. With each layer of oil enamel rectangles and polyurethane, the paintings not only change colors, but the movement appears and disappears within the actual depth of the painting itself.
As stated by the artist, "Most of my work right now is about empty carriers of information, transparency, and imperfectly repeating systems of organization." Each painting encompasses these three fundamental characteristics. The repeating rectangles serve as empty carriers of information and allude to the Internet as well as the transfer of useless information such as junk email and advertisements. There is a transparent connection between these new paintings and his earlier sculpture. The two-dimensional rectangles build upon each other in between layers of polyurethane to create a three dimensional low relief, in the same way his sculptures are groupings of two-dimensional transparent rectangle pieces. The rectangles also repeat time and time again in an imperfect pattern, much like that of a tree ring, a finger print, or stripes on a Zebra. The five large paintings in Current portray not only great visual depth, but also layer upon layer of thought and meaning.
Paul Booker completed his B.F.A. at the University of Texas at Austin prior to receiving his M.F.A. in painting and drawing at the University of North Texas, where he received the Outstanding Graduate Student Award. Booker currently lives and works in Dallas, Texas.