“Poetry My Ass! (Meditations on the Untimely Arrival of Truth in the Form of a Social Catastrophe Enjoyed Upon My Behalf),” by Arvin Flores at West Gallery, from July 19 to August 6, 2012, features paintings that explore the intersection of gestural abstraction expressing end-game aesthetic consciousness into words written with maximal stylistic intensity, as vituperative device for the purpose of liberating art from the curse of its conventions and the mire of received ideas. In the paintings, Flores uses an austere palette of neutral colors that gives attention to the way painterly marks are formed away from illusion, the structure being laid bare, allowing gesture to shape itself into written language – the words ravishing the virgin proclamations of painting, with witticisms that fail to catch laughter yet succeed by turning into provocations, effectively defiling the body of painting while producing newer offspring.
Exhibition
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