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JASON MIDDLEBROOK
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UNTITLED. MIAMI BEACH: JASON MIDDLEBROOK
IMAGE: HI-RES
On View: December 5 — December 9, 2012
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Booth A12
December 5 - 9, 2012

Located directly on the beach in the heart of South Beach at 12th Street and Ocean Drive, UNTITLED. Miami Beach is housed in a unique temporary structure suffused with natural light and will take full advantage of the unique attributes of its surroundings.


DODGEgallery is pleased to present a solo booth of new work by Jason Middlebrook at UNTITLED. Miami Beach. Middlebrook's long-standing interest in abstraction, intersecting disciplines and nature are the cross-currents for this body of work: his planks.

Hand-selecting internal cuts of Curly Maple, Ash, English Elm, and Cairo Walnut tree trunks, Middlebrook laboriously covers the planed façades with repeating geometry in highly saturated pigment. His line-dominant compositions imply infinite extension beyond the bounds of the plank form, confronting and expanding the viewer's sense of space. Middlebrook's absence of representational imagery heightens the figurative nature of the planks themselves, while allowing for landscape references to dominate the exhibition. Whether colorful or monochromatic, the paintings fluctuate between being harmonious and incongruous with the natural shape, tone and grain of wood. Middlebrook's planks are a meditation on the complex relationship between humankind and nature, a long-term topic of investigation for the artist.

For Middlebrook, the planks are both objects and surfaces, sculptures and paintings. Whether leaning, or wall hung, the planks engage their surrounding context, connecting the space between the pictorial plane and physical dimension. The series recalls the works of John McCracken, though here the planks contain the memory of time and are painted with highly individualized surfaces. Another influence is Sol LeWitt in his commitment to obsessive line-making on existing surfaces and interest in scale, though Middlebrook is more intuitive than rule based. In certain works, the sensation of movement through color and pattern recalls Bridget Riley, refusing a primary focal point and creating an overall optical impression. At times, scale overwhelms, however the most awe-inspiring moments are ones when the laboriousness and remarkable beauty of Middlebrook's painting embodies the sense of time and magnificence instilled within the trees themselves.