We look backwards, We learn, We go forwards
293 Sprig Tree Path, Sag Harbor NY 11963
I push painting towards sculpture and sculpture towards painting. That is the base concept of my work. There is an interdisciplinary play that happens in my studio, and material and process come together in a very physical way. My work is multifaceted, but it’s always just painting about painting. It is a mediation on “what is painting”. I am interested in the formal aspects about the physical record, and the use of technique, and the manipulation of material that happens in representational painting.
Paint is the vehicle with which image is described. I let you see that the image is made out of paint. The truth of the work is at its core just ‘paint on canvas’ . It is not really a still life or figure or landscape. It is paint that has been manipulated and pushed around on canvas, and I let the viewer enjoy in that expression.
This expressive formalism happens in the cement paintings, the resin paintings, the figurative work, the abstract work, the wave paintings, the oil-paint sculptures, and in the dark self portraits. My studio doesn't shift from series to series. These pursuits all happen simultaneously. They all evolve together and inform each other and grow from the same base concept (sculptural painting). The same way a tree doesn’t grow one branch at a time. It grows all of them at the same time drawing energy up from the shared trunk and roots. This fertile
ground that this “tree” grows in is the blurring between the lines of sculpture and painting.
In the art historical paintings, I am looking back and digesting master works and then bringing that memory of them forward through the artistic freedoms of the twentieth and twenty first century. They are contemporary takes on traditional subjects. Many are framed in sculpted frames that are contemporary takes on traditional frames. Again the blurring of sculpture and painting comes to the fore in these works. They are images of art history formally chewed up and digested and represented…. as in re-presented.
In my presentation for “Drive By” I selected these art historical works to pay homage to the past, and to help remember where we have been. They are studies of the past and are learning from it. Made new and fresh for a new and fresh time. When we emerge from this pandemic we should also learn from the past. We should step forward with purpose and care, growing our love for the old earth, and building our gratitude for the new.
https://www.dyektai.com/
IG@darius_yektai
DYektai@gmail.com