Miguel Marcos Gallery is pleased to invite you to the exhibition Asteriscos Rotos, (Broken Asterisks), which presents recent works by the American artist Dennis Hollingsworth (Los Angeles, U.S., 1956).
Contextualized in his beginnings in the framework of the new American expressionists, his attitude towards art and painting materialized in an aporia induced a romantic fascination with the unlimited and a strange desire to dematerialize painting into "pure visuality".
The works of Hollingsworth bring up some basic questions of abstract art as the absolute power of art, the emancipation of conventions and spiritual revolution to express what remains hidden from the senses.
In the words of the art critic Juan Bufill, "Dennis Hollingsworth's work is an excellent and clear example of painting in XXI century, which is a consequence of but different from the previous painting. It is abstract but meawhile very physical and concrete. Its certain aspects enable to define it as materialistic, or structuralist, because it owns an underlined plastic syntax where unfold and relate a particular repertoire of formal elements and materials of technical procedures. But at the same time his paintings do not conform to deploy exercises of structuralist style and tends to evoke and suggest existential life experiences. ¨
The introspection of the techniques for creation leads the artist to new ways of conceiving the creative act. This new direction that maintains the essence of his work is characterized by the importance of drawings as well as introducing new elements such as asterisks, naturalist reason that reminds us of something hidden behind, and that brings us an aura of mediterraneidad.
In his paintings, multicolored whirl of his palette can be seen, which becomes almost Fauvist combined with the psychoanalysis of creation, resulting in a work full of symbolism and emotion, in which it´s intuited the freedom and the containment, the free will and the pure mathematics, the original chaos and the confusion of the most harmonious fantasy.
In its aesthetics Theodor Adorno said that "the works of art are more than existence, but not because of something that existent, but its language" (Aesthetic Theory, Taurus, 1992). Besides that the work of Hollingsworth witness a reconceptualization of the ways to understand and make art, it is full of reminiscences of the tradition of the avant-garde and in them it can be perceived the influence of Joan Miró, André Breton or Jason Pollock among others. Dematerialization of the paintings, result of the conceptual aesthetics of the 50s, leads to a purely visual aesthetic, in which the oil becomes the main axis of the frame and the creative breath of the painter gives rise to works that focus the various forces of nature.
The whole selected works for this exhibition are full of Mediterranean symbolism expressed by the asterisks that represent the multiple paths of ships, as well as the preponderant hidden forces of sea at sunset with an orange tone that bodes night. An oasis of peace that is presented hidden from our senses.
Hollingsworth´s works are part of the collection of MoCA Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, U.S.) and the MMAP Pérez Art Museum of Miami (Miami, U.S. ).