Douglas Witmer

Fruitville at Some Walls, Oakland CA

I’m very pleased to announce the opening of “Fruitville,” at Chris Ashley’s project Some Walls in Oakland, CA. This is a project that has been a long time in the making, and presents a virtually unknown body of work from the past 10 years. The exhibition is fully documented online and includes an excellent essay by Chris Ashley. Some Walls is also open by appointment if you are in California. In addition to the exhibition, I have updated the gallery of Fruitville works on my website with a dozen images. Press release follows:

Some Walls presents Philadelphia-based artist Douglas Witmer’s exhibition Fruitville from June 20 – July 25, 2010 . Douglas Witmer is well known for his paintings which intuitively combine simple geometric imagery, emphatic color, and subtle manipulation of surface physicality. In addition to this widely-shown and growing body of work, for the past several years Witmer has worked on a series small three dimensional pieces using found wood as a support called Fruitville. This exhbition is the first time the Fruitville works have been shown publicly. Witmer has said about this series:

The Fruitville Pike is a road where I grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It’s a major thoroughfare, but it doesn’t go to, from, or through anywhere called Fruitville. My efforts to find Fruitville, if there ever was such a place at all, have been inconclusive.

So Fruitville exists in my imagination as a kind of Eden; a place of purity, clarity, and quiet delight. It manifests itself in an ongoing visual process of experimentation with wood, paint, glue, paper, ink, light, and shadows. The things that make up my Fruitville exist to be in relationship to the places where they can be seen, and also in relationship with each other.

The sensitive, direct, and quirky color, spatial, and textural qualities that appear in Witmer’s paintings and works on paper are also found in the Fruitville series, continuing his approach to making art that is lush, playful, and deceptively simple, yet rigorous, iconic, and commanding. Ten additional Fruitvilles works and five paintings- four on canvas, one on paper- are also available for viewing.

Some Walls is a curatorial and writing art project in a private home in Oakland, California. Some Walls is open by appointment only. To view the exhibition online please visit somewalls.com. To schedule a visit, or for more information, please contact Chris Ashley at info@somewalls.com.

First Light available as a free download

I make music under the name The Consolidated Hand Mouth & Ear Institute. My album of solo ambient guitar pieces is now available as a free download at bandcamp.com. Originally released at the end of 2007, it’s my gift to you. Enjoy!

Bridgette Mayer Gallery’s “Ready, Willing, and Able” benefit exhibition continues through July 2, 2010. Ready, Willing, and Able Philadelphia is an organization with a mission of ending homelessness, substance abuse and criminal recidivism by providing transitional work, supportive services and clean, safe housing to homeless and formerly incarcerated individuals in Philadelphia. This is the second year Bridgette invited me to participate, and the second time she has sold my piece before the opening. She invited me to make more work for the show, which I gladly did. So here’s a chance at two brand new works and the opportunity to support a great cause. The works I have created for these benefit exhibitions are quite unique in relation to my larger body of work. I do work in small formats, but these are quite a bit smaller than what I typically make. Also, except for the works for these benefit shows, I have not made square paintings in more than a decade. In fact as you see below, my first piece in this year’s show was actually two joined squares.

It Is Happening Again, black gesso and acrylic on canvas, two joined panels, 10 x 20 inches overall. SOLD.

What If We Give It Away?, black gesso and acrylic on canvas, 10 inches square. Now available.

Rise, black gesso and acrylic on canvas, 10 inches square. Now available.

Full press release here.
View all the work in the show here.

Hello friends. I hope this note finds you well. Here are some notes from the studio. Have a great summer!

Ring The Bells Anew
Blank Space Gallery, New York

Thanks to all of you who saw my show at Blank Space Gallery in New York back in March. The exhibition is over, but my friend Tim Gierschick wrote a very thoughtful review, which you can read here.

Fruitville
Some Walls, Oakland CA

Over in Oakland, at his exhibition project Some Walls, Chris Ashley is about to exhibit and publish an essay about my little-known group of painted and drawn-upon objects called Fruitville. I have made these for over 10 years in fits and starts. The group numbers nearly 50 pieces at this point. If you know Chris Ashley’s art and writing, then you know he takes a uniquely sensitive and intelligent approach to viewing art. More info coming soon about this very exciting project.

Ready Willing & Able Benefit Show
Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia
Opening Reception
First Friday, June 4, 6 – 8:30 pm
Exhibition runs through July 2

I was honored to again be invited by gallerist Bridgette Mayer to contribute a work to her annual benefit exhibition. It opens THIS FRIDAY NIGHT!

My piece, shown above, is brand new and titled “It Is Happening Again.”

This year Bridgette is partnering with Ready, Willing, and Able Philadelphia to help promote their mission of ending homelessness, substance abuse and criminal recidivism by providing transitional work, supportive services and clean, safe housing to homeless and formerly incarcerated individuals in Philadelphia.
Full press release here.
Preview all the work here.

Other Notes

One of my School Papers pieces is included in the Invitational Small Works Annual at the New Arts Program, Kutztown PA.
Through July 10
173 W. Main, Kutztown

Escape from New York, organized by Minus Space in Brooklyn, in which I am included, just ended at Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand. It was the third stop on a multi-venue tour throughout Australia and New Zealand.

Coming up this December, I am scheduled to be included in a group exhibition highlighting contemporary American abstraction at The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art. More details forthcoming.

Douglas Witmer | Ring The Bells Anew
March 4-27, 2010
Reception, Thursday March 4, 6-8pm

Blank Space Gallery
511 West 25th Street, Suite 204
New York, New York, 10001
blankspaceart.com

Press Release
Blank Space Gallery is pleased to present Ring The Bells Anew, an exhibition of recent paintings by Douglas Witmer. This is the artist’s third solo show in New York, and his first with the gallery.

Over the past decade, Witmer has gained increasing attention for his uniquely distilled sensibility related to his paintings’ surface and color. His recent canvases feature one or two rectangles of solid color on top of and interacting with varied gray washes that cascade down the painting’s surface. Though reductive in their attitude and appearance, the resulting works are anything but “minimal.”

Contrary to first impressions, Witmer’s compositions are not planned or diagrammed. For the artist, painting is a process of inquiry; each piece is an individual result of decisions made intuitively and directly.

The critic and art historian Vittorio Colaizzi has written, “Witmer paints the inheritance of modernist abstraction, and perhaps, metaphorically, the more ecumenical spirituality of today, in the openness of his compositions, their perpetual almost-ness, and their refusal of closure or perfection.”

About the title for this exhibition the artist states, “I am trying to underscore the idea that my paintings embody new acts of declaration using long-existing means. Taken further, it communicates a hope in the continued relevance of abstract painting.”

Douglas Witmer holds a B.A. from Goshen College and an M.F.A. from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In New York his work has recently appeared at P.S.1/MoMA in the group exhibition “Minus Space,” as well as The Painting Center and M55 Art in Long Island City. Other recent venues include: Pharmaka in Los Angeles, Gallery Siano in Philadelphia, The University of Maryland, The University of Dayton in Ohio, Sydney Non-Objective in Australia, and Bus-Dori Project Space in Tokyo, Japan. He lives and works in Philadelphia.

This month, in advance of my upcoming show in March, I’m gonna show you around my studio a little bit. There will be new views every day or so til the end of February.

 

–$30 each includes prompt trackable Priority Mail shipping in the US. (If you buy several pieces to have shipped together, I will discount each piece by $5. I will quote shipping for international purchases on a per-item basis, but generally count on $5-10 additional).

–For an additional $20 per item, I will archivally mount and mat the piece with a white mat to the nearest appropriate standard frame size for the piece (generally 9×12 or 11×14).

–I can email you an invoice and you can complete the transaction securely through PayPal so you can use a credit card, etc.

–To purchase, contact me: douglas [at] douglaswitmer [dot] com

Untitled, 2005. Marker on Mexican made quadrille notebook paper. 8.25 x 5.5 inches

I remember making this one on the plane flying back from El Paso. What doesn’t come across is how each of these drawings on the Mexican graph paper is folded first. I drew towards each fold, barely able to see what had been drawn before. The drawings were completed when they were unfolded to reveal how the colors and shapes interacted with each other.

$30 each includes priority mail shipping.
$20 additional each for archival mounting and matting to a standard frame size.
Contact me: douglas [at] douglaswitmer [dot] com to purchase.

Here are the full details about the project.