25 Apr 2017

Dialectical Praxis: Celia Johnson and Donald Martiny

Fred Giampietro Gallery

Reviewed by Ashley Norwood Cooper

In "Dialectical Praxis" at Fred Giampietro Gallery, two painters explore the fusion of action and thought.

Donald Martiny creates giant brushstrokes that are mounted on the wall with hidden aluminum brackets. Their large scale and pronounced dimensionality emphasize that a brushstroke is actually a record of movement, like a contrail from an airplane.

In encaustic paint on wood panels, Celia Johnson makes abstractions from shapes that are reminiscent of die-cast machine parts. The flat colors, sometimes transparent, more often opaque, are worn down in places, as though through repeated mechanical use. These worn spots reveal the layers below. The wood grain of the panels is left visible in places. Color theory weds with ideas about the physicality of objects and the way they respond to use.

As contemporary life becomes increasingly virtual, Martiny and Johnson assert that our very thoughts derive from our physical interaction with the material world.