15.09 – 24.11.2011
ERIC WHITE – Automatic
curated by Julie Kogler
Galleria Antonio Colombo is proud to present “Automatic”, the first solo show by Eric White in Italy.
Eric White can be considered one of the great pioneers of the oneiric Realism that draws on American film culture prior to World War II to create original psychedelic visions in the most refined painterly manner, deceptively referencing the customary vision of the imagery of the America Dream. His works often seem to lurk behind a very thin veil, an impalpable membrane that separates the real world from the realm of dreams, a land of infinite meetings, sensations, oddities. White continuously crosses this narrow borderline, creating a new dimension that corresponds to the phase of passage in which perception is altered: the scenes can unfold in slow motion, or be speeded up to a velocity that precludes correct recognition of the subjects, like the intoxication of the figures of Francis Bacon.
For the exhibition “Automatic” Eric White has done a series of paintings that show the interiors of vintage cars, seen from strange angles, with characters lifted from Hollywood films of the 1940s and 1950s. The latter, however, are often doubled, or represented in different moments that intertwine in scenes that are open to layered perception. As if White were attempting to analyze, through painting, the mood variations of the characters across a more extensive time span. White has a fluid, rambling relationship with time, condensing different moments in a single blink of the eye.
The exhibition contains oil paintings as well as some drawings and limited-edition screen prints.
Eric White was born in 1968 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Today he lives and works in Brooklyn. Over the last few years his paintings have met with international acclaim, with shows in leading galleries and museums around the world, including Jeffrey Deitch Project and Gladstone Gallery in New York, Laguna Art Museum in Los Angeles, and the MACRO in Rome.
In 2010 he received a fellowship for painting from the New York Foundation for the Arts.
His imagery is appreciated by many collectors, including some movie stars and personalities from the world of popular music.
