KEN DUBIN
ARTIST STATEMENT
THE EMERGENCE / BURIAL / . . . SERIES: 1979 - Present
My ongoing body of work, the EMERGENCE / BURIAL / … SERIES: 1979 – Present,
is informed by origin, growth, change, transcendence and rebirth. I explore the unfolding of
time and the cycles of life that exist within and interpret the realm of past, present, future;
that everything comes from somewhere and is growing and changing into something else.
White is used as the predominant color field, a metaphor witch allows for the potential of
all possibility and a spiritual sensibility. The surface activity ranges from a quiet to erupting
energy, suggesting growth, transformation and possibility to be considered. There is much
layering of the paint, both releasing and restricting the abstract activity to suggest the process
of origin, change, disintegration and it's return. Although content is confined by the physical
edges of the canvas I make the paintings appear to transcend this restriction; as if to have no
beginning or end, referring to the boundlessness of time and all that takes place within it.
I make paintings to ultimately be seen within the context of others; although each piece is
painted as a fully considered finished work, it is my intention to make them as parts of a
whole and it’s their relationship to each other that allows for them to be fully realized as a
single organic whole.
Origin 1.2012 acrylic on paper, 10" x 7.5", 2012
Origin 3.2011 acrylic on paper, 9.5" x 7.5", 2011
BIO
Ken Dubin’s
paintings have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the
United States and abroad including, the Chicago Cultural Center, Perimeter
Gallery, Gwenda Jay/Addington Gallery, Fassbinder Gallery and Artemesia
Gallery, in Chicago; the Wustum Museum of
Fine Art and Peltz Gallery In Wisconsin; Judith
Racht Gallery In Michigan; David Adamson Gallery
in Washington DC; Shirley Fetterman Gallery and Triplex Gallery in New York, Perry-Nicole Gallery in Memphis, Tennessee; ICON Gallery, Teeple Hansen Gallery and the Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, in Iowa; the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Camp
Gallery and Muscarelle Museum of Art in Virginia; the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institutek, Regensburg Germany. An exhibition
sponsored by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, curated by Frederick Brandt of 20th Century Art at the Virginia Museum, traveled through Virginia including: the Bayly Art Museum,
Maier Museum of Art, Roanoke Museum of Fine Art, and the Virginia Beach Arts Center.
He
has received fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, Illinois; the Virginia
Center for the Creative Arts, Virginia; the Michael Karolyi Memorial
Foundation, Vence, France; Ox-Bow, Saugatuck, Michigan; the Grinnell Artist
residency in Grinnell, Iowa and Prairie center of the Arts, Peoria, Illinois.
Dubin
received an M.F.A. from the University
of Illinois, Chicago. He was born in Chicago, Illinois and moved to Iowa in
2009.