Exhibitions
GEORGE DOMBEK: RECENT PAINTINGS
David Lusk Gallery Nashville / 516 Hagan St. May 1, 2018 - May 26, 2018
George Dombek
David Lusk Gallery Nashville is pleased to present their first solo exhibition of the work of George Dombek. A continuation of his debut solo show in Memphis, Recent Paintings contains nearly twenty of Dombek’s expertly rendered water-media works of barns, farm equipment, and his Ozark portraits. A large new monograph Barns & Portrait Paintings, published by the University of Arkansas Press, accompanies the exhibition.
An architect and an artist, Dombek creates elegant minimalist compositions of barn exteriors and interiors, and close-ups of farm implements that are often reoriented into figurative gatherings. The beams inside his barns, varying in weight and size, crisscross through the spaces, capture and play with light and shadow. Dombek studies the barns, disassembling and reassembling them through his painting process. As in his Ozark portraits depicting machinery parts, he creates wholly unique structures, blurring the lines between reality and invention.
Throughout this body of work, Dombek employs his sense of humor with the mechanical skills of an architect: discarded farm equipment waits eagerly behind the structure, trucks begin to emerge from the bays and wood and metal sneak away from their nails. A whimsical feeling resides in each piece, coming to life through the warped boards and bent metal. Dated farm equipment and other objects become elevated to characters playfully engaging with each other on fence posts.
“Place and landscape create the patterns that inform his narratives of agrarian architecture and objects. Dombek’s paintings are filled with dualities: compositions both simple and complex, spaces both empty and full, and shadows both figural and residual. The pattern and filigree of the shadow on the varying surfaces captures the light and freezes it in a particular moment in time.”
George Dombek received a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture and a Masters of Fine Arts in Painting at the University of Arkansas. He went on to teach architecture and art at universities in Arkansas, Ohio, Florida, Saudi Arabia, and Italy. Over a 40-year career he has generated a body of work included in over 800 museum, corporate and private collections. He lives and works outside of Fayetteville, AR.
