In New Work, 79-year-old artist Ted Dutch invites the viewer to take a journey through the intriguing, highly detailed landscape of the artist's imagination.
Ted Dutch's oeuvre incorporates a deliberate ambiguity, making it almost impossible to comment definitively on the narrative of his pieces - they are at once carefully constructed and highly detailed, but remain open to interpretation, much the same way as an abstract painting might resonate to create different imagined forms within the viewer.
Colours are by turns brilliant and sombre, bristling against each to create a vigorous counterbalance to the almost obsessive detail which threatens to overwhelm the figures. The characters are shown in moments of pause, their actions remaining ambiguous, inviting the viewer to speculate on their intentions and story that is being told by the piece. There is a particular pathos in Dutch’s pieces which allows them to be read as comic or slightly tragic; compositionally they may be hives of activity with patches of calm; thematically a fantasy world or an everyday reality.
Renowned as a master technician in his other artistic spheres of screenprinting and ceramics, Ted Dutch's paintings in this exhibition contain an astounding level of detail. This is achieved largely thorough his expert integration of diverse media such as printmaking, collage, acrylic paint and canvas. The depth achieved in these pieces is testament to the intense concentration and time devoted to each piece and serves to enhance the sense of possibility and a desire to explore the world created by the artist.
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