DAVID SOLOMON AT DAVID RICHARD CONTEMPORARY
Art In America, February 2012
Jan Ernst Adlmann
DAVID SOLOMON AT DAVID RICHARD CONTEMPORARY
Art In America, February 2012
Jan Ernst Adlmann
David Solomon has been an active member
of the Santa Fe art community for
the 11 years he has lived here, as both a
painter and an independent curator. His
latest exhibition demonstrated not only
his artistic maturity but also his consistent
drive toward pictorial originality.
All 15 works (2010 or ’11) are oil on
aluminum panel and range from 1 to 3
feet to a side. The paint appears to float
on the surface. The lustrous Knowledge
of Good and Evil exemplifies Solomon’s
nimble compositions. Its forms evoke
microscopic life, like zygotes, amoebas
or paramecia, strange things seen in a
droplet of water. A quivering yellow blob,
with a white-dotted black shape hovering
inside it like a cell’s nucleus, seems about
to be pierced by a striated projectile that
is pointed at both ends. The latter form is
recurrent at varying sizes throughout the
canvases, and can recall a leaf, a football
or a blimp. In Unknown Fruits, it appears
more like a large green crescent.
Complications Arise, Beauty Persists
contains three of the projectiles: two are
black with white stripes, the other yellow
and gray-green. They are superimposed
on a large peach-colored shape that
looks like a speech bubble.
While most of the works are completely
abstract, several approach figuration. In
Mother and Child, a biomorphic blue form
outlined in peach dominates the canvas,
evoking a child in swaddling. It is watched
over by a black shape with a single, moonlike
gray eye that looms behind the child.
On the pinkish-red ground in Versions of
the What #3, three glowing red orbs and
a dripping passage of horizontal yellow
strokes frame a lively presence that leans
in from the canvas’s right side. The tripartite
form, in black, white, red and blue,
resembles a cartoonish figure, its boxy
torso supporting a grinning head topped
by three antennalike protuberances.
Born in Kingston, N.Y., in 1976, Solomon
studied at the San Francisco Art
Institute, where he worked as a studio
assistant to Frank Lobdell, whose formal
vocabulary Solomon sometimes echoes.
Prehistoric petroglyphs scattered
throughout the landscape in the environs
of Santa Fe have certainly informed the
artist’s work. Consciously or not, Solomon’s
paintings share their sprightly yet
numinous qualities.
—Jan Ernst Adlmann
Download: DAVID SOLOMON AT DAVID RICHARD CONTEMPORARY
Art In America, February 2012
Jan Ernst Adlmann