Exhibitions
TAD LAURITZEN WRIGHT: SLOW MOTION CONTEMPLATIONS
David Lusk Gallery Memphis / 97 Tillman St. September 3 - October 5th
Tad Lauritzen Wright
David Lusk Gallery announces Slow Motion Contemplations, an exhibition of new paintings, sculpture, and sculptural paintings by Tad Lauritzen Wright.
“I understand a lot more about art than I did 30 years ago when I was a younger artist. Now I’m more embedded,” states Wright. His emphasis on the connections between his varied bodies of work going back 30 years is clear: the nonlinear subject matter that twists and turns throughout the canvas and 3D sculptures relates to his tangles from the early 2020s, one-line paintings from the early 2010s, one-line drawings from the 1990s, and the self-portraits of his college days.
In Slow Motion Contemplations his loops and drips and lines take on more weight and scale - but so do Wright’s modulated use of color. A monumental triptych in blue presses the space between lines almost to non-existence. A long yellow ceiling mounted line floats like the contrail of a plane. A six-foot red laminated wood cut-out tangle stands sentinel in the courtyard. The exhibition is divided into three rooms, and each room is devoted to a primary color, further extolling his lines’ virtues.
Along with influences from Minimalism, Pop Art, Abstract Expressionism, and Automatic drawing, everyday objects such as extension cords, twisting vines, water hoses, graffiti, concrete repairs, knots, and tangles continue to reference his creations and study. The exhibition requires meditation on cyclical patterns of history and time, connections made in those moments between each other, within nature and the world.
Tad Lauritzen Wright, a Texan, received an MFA from Memphis College of Art and a BFA from Nebraska Wesleyan University. Over the past thirty years, he has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the United States, including Coop Gallery and Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville; Anderson O’Brien, Omaha; Koelsch Gallery, Houston; Cheryl Hazen Gallery, New York; Cuevas Tilleard Gallery, New York; ACME Gallery, Los Angeles; Millsaps College, Jackson; Arkansas State University, Jonesboro; Brooks Museum, Memphis; Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis; and the New Orleans Museum of Art. His work is many public collections including the Tamarind Printmaking Institute, Albuquerque; Fidelity Investments, Boston; The Children's Museum, Memphis; the City of Memphis; Hallmark Collection, Kansas City; Memphis/Shelby County Library and Information Center-Collierville; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; and the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock. He lives, makes art, and teaches art in Memphis.
