(Cherry and Martin archive - Cherry and Martin is now Philip Martin Gallery.)
Daniel Dove’s six recent paintings in his fine solo debut at Cherry and Martin make the most of surface manipulation. Paint shifts from slick to scumbled, like rust on a trophy or moss on steel. At times, it appears a squeegee has been dragged across the canvas, roughing up but not obscuring the depicted images.
Sometimes, as in the ruined interior of “Theater,” the territory feels abandoned. Elsewhere, the airplane fuselages that dominate “Autopsy” and “Sequel” echo with violent disruption, and the interlaced tubular abstractions of “Funland 1” and “Funland 2” recall forms in early 20th century American Modernist art.
In surface and image, the aura of Dove’s deftly handled paintings is one of Industrial Age decay. What yields the most resonance, however, is the work’s strange mix of melancholia and manufacture.
“Autopsy” is based on the forensic reconstruction of a crashed plane, but Dove has inserted jagged, cartoon-like gray shapes to signify the brutal blast. The zigzag shapes cast shadows on the floor and the fuselage. This bizarre yet clever painterly trick snaps attention back from what the painting represents to what any painting is: a fiction. Destruction is balanced with construction, and the precariousness is aesthetically riveting.
