FSU Art BFA '93 Michael Velliquette @ DCKT Contemporary
Michael Velliquette
Their Arising and Passing Away
October 25th- December 8, 2013
Opens October 28 from 6-8PM
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DCKT Contemporary is pleased to present Their Arising and Passing Away, MICHAEL VELLIQUETTE’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. A full color catalog will be available, with essays by Sara Krajewski, Evan J. Garza, Hamlett Dobbins and Marc Mitchell. VELLIQUETTE’s sculptural cut paper constructions insist on a new spiritual vocabulary, combining aspects of early 20th century formalism and contemporary sensibilities about the handmade with the visual lexicon he has developed over the past decade. VELLIQUETTE’s vocabulary is bright, dense and ornamental, punctuated with recurring motifs such as hands, eyes, flowers, planets, mandalas and goofy, smiley faces.
VELLIQUETTE introduces gestural and accidental abstraction to these new works, creating moments both subtle and energizing when contrasted with the more tightly controlled areas. Working from background to foreground, their successive layering creates elaborate dimensional strata. Pale Spray is a wild growth of porcelain-white paper blossoms set against a cacophonously colored backdrop of interlocking rectilinear shapes. Fortress is at once a mosaic of irregularly painted cardboard tesserae and the bulwark of a fanciful castle. In Working Arm, a likeness of the artist’s own appendage is covered with embellished paper armor and then placed against a collage calling to mind both dazzle camouflage and Neolithic cave painting.
VELLIQUETTE lives and works in Madison, WI. His work is included in the permanent collections of the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Art Museum of South Texas (Corpus Christi), the Racine Art Museum and the Progressive Art Collection (Cleveland). Solo exhibitions have been held in venues in New York, San Francisco, Dallas, San Antonio, Memphis and throughout Wisconsin. Group exhibitions include Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art since the 1960s at the San Antonio Museum of Art andSlash: Paper Under the Knife at the Museum
“Its Bangs, 2013, paper, acrylic & ink, 12 x 12”
of Arts and Design (New York), among many other venues. VELLIQUETTE’s work has been featured in publications including The New York Times, New York magazine, Time Out NY, Beautiful Decay and Glasstire.