Melini’s hard-edged paintings use symmetry, pattern, and color to propose a complicated visual experience. While the works may appear formally concerned, errant lines of paint and other slips of the artist’s hand play down their rigor, steering the work away from an insistence on perfection. The featured pattern in these paintings is taken from the wallpaper of the artist’s childhood bedroom; besides this personal association, Melini is attracted to the pattern because of its universal, even generic, nature and its range of disparate connections, from printed fabrics to the modernist grid. Melini assimilates or nods towards art historical antecedents as well as decorative traditions without prioritizing either, mindful of how various forms draw a viewer into the image and signify something beyond the represented. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Douglas Melini: You Have to Peer into the Sky to See the Stars.
Softcover, 6 pages
Essay: Adrianna Campbell
Out of Print