One winter morning in 2001, the artist James Drake was sitting over coffee with the novelist Cormac McCarthy. They were at one of their regular haunts in Santa Fe, N.M., where they both live, chatting about work and family, the kinds of things said idly that lead to other thoughts.
This spring at the international art fair, Art Chicago, one booth drew a particularly attentive crowd: Catherine Edelman Gallery was exhibiting three unusual works by artist Gregory Scott
Assembling the leftovers of a hyper-consumerist world and reconstructing them into forms in no way reminiscent of their buy-and-sell origins rouses a fond serenity. In his solo exhibition Centered at Barbara Archer Gallery, Troy Dugas accomplishes this in perhaps the most fulfilling way possible. After all, what opposes consumerism, marketing, and labels more than mandalas and religiously tinged spreads that are all about rhythmic pattern and domestic tradition?
From a distance, they look like intricate, hand-woven lace or scrupulously handcrafted fabrics. The designs are at once dizzyingly complicated and reassuringly predictable.
CIGAR, BOURBON, BEER and various other consumer product labels are the primary medium for Troy Dugas” work. The artist recycles these often-discarded commercial signifiers, transforming them into elaborate tapestries comprised of intricate patterns, color and overall compositional play. Dugas says of his work, “At first glance my work is very serious, very organized. But when you investigate it, I think it”s kind of funny.
Lesley Dill’s “Poetic Visions: From Shimmer to Sister Gertrude Morgan” at the Whatcom Museum, Washington, October 23, 2011 – March 4, 2012.