John Pomara, Pool Party #7, 2021, oil and mixed medium on aluminum panel
15 x 11 inches
John Pomara, Pool Party #2, 2021, oil and mixed medium on aluminum panel
15 x 11 inches
John Pomara, Pool Party #31, 2021, oil and mixed medium on aluminum panel
15 x 11 inches
This new work of Dallas-based painter John Pomara's presents a departure, or deviation, from his exhibition a year ago titled Digital Debris. That show was part of Pomara's long-running dialogue with the trappings of digital culture: pixelation, display errors, questions about what is being communicated, using painting to investigate non-painting.
These Marfa works have physical similarities: the paint is applied to a metal (aluminum) surface and the top layer is glossy. The processes between are pure analog, however.
Per the gallery: "[U]nlikely combinations of oil paint and other additives to react with one another.. as fluid properties of the paint repel or attract... As these episodic reactions occur, the unpredictable activity is mediated to a great degree by the artist’s observation of the entropic aspect of this process. Pomara thus allows his 'laboratory' to be inundated with wildly out of control colors, surfaces, and improbable combinations..."
Tom here: the Marfa group provides an intriguing sidebar to Pomara's work -- a detour back into analog and also into The Monochrome, which has its own tradition and associations within abstract painting. It will be interesting to see how or if this direction loops back into ongoing digital discussion.
Opened December 10, 2021 at:
Eugene Binder
218 North Highland Ave.
Marfa, TX
eugenebinderart@gmail.com