Michael Reafsnyder | Patrick Wilson

MICHAEL REAFSNYDER PATRICK WILSON

MICHAEL REAFSNYDER PATRICK WILSON

MILES M c E N E RY G A L L E RY

520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011

tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

MICHAEL REAFSNYDER AND PATRICK WILSON: A Dialectic on Pleasure

By Shana Nys Dambrot

A chromatic maelstrom of lapis-like indigo, deep fuchsia, and cheeky teal exults in its own topographical impasto. Across the room, seemingly placid, luminous expanses of pure slate, lavender, and oxblood are gently roiled by moments of geometric intervention. In this salient pairing of abstract works by the Southern California painters Michael Reafsnyder and Patrick Wilson, the ways in which the works contrast serve to deepen an understanding of each, revealing the degree to which these artists are dealing directly with the same issues of art-making, despite ostensibly disparate outcomes.

Wilson and Reafsnyder have been friends for years. They talk to each other every day, mostly about life, but also about painting and things like aesthetic priorities; the materials and methods involved in making art; the qualities of pigment, substrate, color, and surface; and, above all, the physical pleasure of the act of painting itself. Reafsnyder’s work is tethered in the world of Abstract Expressionism, but in reality, it is the result of deliberate composition and

3

deeply considered nuance. Wilson, for his part, is far more intuitive, improvisational, and pictorial than his minimalist-inflected visual language might suggest. As Miles McEnery notes of bringing the two together: “The confluences in their respective practices are many. Pairing them allows for a clearer understanding not only of their shared concerns, but also how those concerns play out within each artist’s works.”

Michael Reafsnyder’s visceral, vibrant works are messy, not in the way of disorder, but in the glorious way of life itself. Emotive, energetic, and undeniably 4

actual, the zaftig profusion of tactile pigment in his compositions speaks to the physicality, materiality, and excess of both his raw materials and the phenomenological directives of his studio practice. Acknowledging that color is “suspect” for its emotional charge; its self-evident beauty; and its enjoyable, unmediated experientialism, Reafsnyder courts its liberation, often on a large scale and to greater kinetic optical effect. He not only expands the pictorial field; he engages with the architectural space of its display. He also expands the range of color’s voice by employing an array of mark-making strategies, from the wide integrational smear of a knife, to the stiff froth of impasto peaks and valleys, to the cake-writing choreography of squiggles and lines atop and across his variegated geography.

Patrick Wilson engineers electric ecosystems of atmospheric opacity, with a pronounced spatial ambiguity that is uncommon in nonobjective abstraction.

Architectural and edificial, and, as he says, “more built than painted,” Wilson’s stacked shapes create sequences of pictorial structures that are both stable and shifting. Carefully considered orchestrations of chromatic purity and saturation, Wilson’s works demonstrate a carefully elicited optical luminosity. Yet any luxurious, refined expanse that could be considered a color field is immediately punctuated by passages of more intense activity. This is partly a vestigial effect from earlier work in which Wilson would embed small images, an impulse subsequently reduced to inflections of almost-drawings whose presence activates the surface they interrupt. These choices are intuitive, responsive, and reactive in the manner of instinct rather than planning. More than evening the optical effect of chromatic juxtaposition, these moments of mark-making generate the pictorial space and even the liminal object cues that render the compositions as narrative—and as familiar and experiential as non-imagistic work can be.

“Achieving a great 2-D composition requires the ability to draw,” says Wilson, who believes that skill is more essential than any story line or politics. “Whatever is in your person inevitably makes its way into the work. Paintings are meant

5

to be looked at, not read. Visual experience is valid in itself; a message is not always needed. Or the message is, stay human.” The idea of painting as a paraverbal realm, capable of transcending its context by leaving room for the viewer’s own ideas is a preference that Reafsnyder shares as well. Wilson free-associates titles like “Side Door,” “Road Trip,” and “Above Gray Lake” that feel suggested by the work itself, that provide the viewer with a helpful entry point into reading the work, but that push the viewer no farther than the transom of meaning. For Reafsnyder, it’s the squiggles. His laid-in, squeezed-on lines of pure paint—often configured as smiley faces, of all things—function rather like 6

Wilson’s quasi-evocative titles, as social gestures. “It’s twisted art historical humor,” says Reafsnyder. But at the same time, it’s serious business. Representing a disruption of an authoritarian art-historical stance and, perhaps most importantly, a puncture of fine art’s serious veneer, these interruptions offer a way in. Simply put, like Wilson’s vernacular titles, these squiggles let the viewers see themselves, in unironic winks that let people know it’s OK to be playful, it’s OK to enjoy themselves.

To honor both the dialectical and pragmatic nature of the friendship between these artists, self-described “paint nerds,” some discussion of process and materials is required. At one point, for example, each artist abandoned oils

in favor of acrylics—each for his own reasons and each with seismic results.

For Reafsnyder, acrylics have narrowed the window for decision-making at the proverbial easel. While he plans out and strategizes the orchestrated volatility of his compositions, there is an undeniable after-effect of greater explosivity that comes with forcing himself to work faster once he begins. For Wilson, whose technique involves dragging and scraping innumerable layers atop a drum-tight rigid substrate, acrylic not only expands the finer nuances of palette, but it eases his achievement of mirror-smooth, pentimento-accentuated color stories. That is the kind of thing they talk about in their studio sessions, the remarkable degree to which choice of material determines process as much as conceptual foundations. That, and their contagious enthusiasm for intimacy with the luxury of paint itself.

“We have no tricks,” says Wilson. “Our work is honest, no irony. We love the surprises of object-making and color discoveries.”

Reafsnyder concurs. “We share a pursuit of pleasure,” he says, “that borders on hedonism.”

n

Shana Nys Dambrot is an art critic, curator, and author based in downtown Los Angeles. She is the Arts Editor for LA Weekly, and contributes regularly to numerous other publications.

7

8

MICHAEL REAFSNYDER Hot Tamale, 2017 Acrylic on linen 72 x 60 inches 182.9 x 152.4 cm

10

PATRICK WILSON Above Gray Lake, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 35 x 80 inches 88.9 x 203.2 cm

12

MICHAEL REAFSNYDER Cool Flow, 2018 Acrylic on linen 60 x 52 inches 152.4 x 132.1 cm

14

PATRICK WILSON Side Door, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 35 x 80 inches 88.9 x 203.2 cm

16

MICHAEL REAFSNYDER Spring Light, 2018 Acrylic on linen 52 x 60 inches 132.1 x 152.4 cm

18

PATRICK WILSON Bass Pro (Self Portrait), 2018 Acrylic on canvas 35 x 80 inches 88.9 x 203.2 cm

20

MICHAEL REAFSNYDER Grape Escape, 2018 Acrylic on linen 60 x 52 inches 152.4 x 132.1 cm

22

PATRICK WILSON Road Trip, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 35 x 80 inches 88.9 x 203.2 cm

24

MICHAEL REAFSNYDER Salsa King, 2018 Acrylic on linen 52 x 60 inches 132.1 x 152.4 cm

26

PATRICK WILSON Ghost Story, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 22 x 22 inches 55.9 x 55.9 cm

28

MICHAEL REAFSNYDER Glaze Time, 2016 Acrylic on linen 72 x 60 inches 182.9 x 152.4 cm

30

PATRICK WILSON Small Weather Event, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 22 x 22 inches 55.9 x 55.9 cm

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

MICHAEL REAFSNYDER PATRICK WILSON 6 September – 6 October 2018 Miles McEnery Gallery 520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011 +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com Publication © 2018 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved Essay © 2018 Shana Nys Dambrot

32

Photography by Robert Wedemeyer, Los Angeles, CA Catalogue designed by HHA Design, New York, NY ISBN: 978-0-9994871-9-8 Top front & back covers Michael Reafsnyder Spring Light, (detail), 2018 Bottom front & back covers Patrick Wilson Bass Pro (Self Portrait), (detail), 2018

MILES M c E N E RY G A L L E RY