Slippery Silhoutte, 2006
oil on canvas, 84" x 60"
Courtesy of Nick Lawrence

There is a visual gravity that exists within the paintings of Eric Sall. Gestural marks, flat shapes, impastoed dollops, and textured washes pull together into clustered forms on the surface of the canvas as if coalescing. Sall plays with the history of painting, mingling representation's modes and methods with a seemingly disparate lexicon of marks. Utilizing the tradition within painting of presenting a figure, a protagonist, over a marginal background, he merges marks to create a non-representational figure sitting atop a more general background as a nod to representational painting without depicting any discernable forms.

Sall uses free-association and instinct when approaching his canvases. His manipulation of paint is informed by art history equally with instances from his personal experience. Magazine advertisements, movies, logos, his youth, and background are all sources from which he draws his inspiration. He states that his influence can be "a memory of the Northern Lights at 3:00 a.m. on a secluded dirt road in the middle of South Dakota to an image of a brand name jacket in a magazine that I desired. It is just as likely that I would associate graphic marks to designer logos as I would associate a washy field of color to a Midwest sky." His incongruent influences are processed and played out on his canvases as savvy paintings that, despite their schizophrenic nature, are cohesive and awkwardly intriguing.

Eric Sall is a recent graduate of Viginia Commonwealth University's prestigious painting program. His work has been seen at ATM Gallery, NYC; Alona Kagan Gallery, NYC; ADA Gallery, Richmond, VA; Dolphin Gallery, Kansas City, MO; Joseph Nease Gallery, Kansas City, MO; and the Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, NM. He is the recipient of Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship Program Award, Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant Program Award and a Charlotte Street Fund Award. His work is in the collections of the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; and Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, Roswell, NM. He currently lives in Richmond, VA.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Opening reception with talk by the artist
October 4, 2006, 4:00 – 5:30 pm
Peeler Art Center, Room 103

For more information about special events associated with this exhibition, please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4336