JOHN PATRICK SALISBURY

reception may 3r d 6 – 9 pm

UNDERTOW

I have been at work on this collection of paintings with assemblage forthe past two years. This project has followed me from a basement inNew York to a barn outside of New Orleans, in Folsom. The Chinesebirch panels are loaded with enamel paints floating amid numerouscoatings of transparent polyurethanes that––after many dozens of layers––creates a beautiful golden trap for the intimate collection ofobjects embedded within it.

Each painting is an exposure of the tiniest and the most unseeable.From coalescing cells, to shards of coursing atoms, to gangs of cluster-ing amoebas, each shape has it's own identity and agenda. The vibrat-ing chaos of String Theory intertwines with other nanoparticles andorganisms, all of which dwell in some form of water, from a rain puddleto the deepest, blackest sea. Of course the scale is very mixed up, fromprotons to pollywogs, but what is beyond our easy perception tends tooccupy the same mind-space (for me anyway). Occasionally thesehyper-miniatures interact with additional out-sized items which havecrept into my life, a rusted lid of a can, a handfull of pokeberries, a shedsnakeskin, a chunk of metal. Each one of these holds a nonspecificmemory, a familiarity, that needs to be floating deep within theseblown-up worlds.

The repeated use of the same paints and chemicals eventually devel-oped into a system, and from this, connections formed from the veryact of creating the pieces. Over the course of weeks and months, thelayers built in my mind, as they did on the panels, like the stackedpages in a book. The actions and the subjects have folded into thesame space––frozen in time, fused like a prehistoric creature in amber.

JOHN PATRICK SALISBURY

may 1st – june 3rd, 2008

reception saturday may 3rd 6 – 9 pm

Front Cover: ReIN (Pond Mechanics with Wayward Ocean Ink)80" x 72" polyurethane, enamel, wax, epoxy, and other on wood panels, 2006

WHcb (Invention with Visitaion)48" x 32" polyurethane, enamel, India ink, and other

on birch panel, 2007

BCir_a (Initial Intention for Good Things)48" x 32" polyurethane, enamel, India ink, and other on birch panel, 2007

BCir_b (She Sees the Intention for Good Things)48" x 32" polyurethane, enamel, India ink, and other

on birch panel, 2007

UTrch_c (All Eventually Arise, Macro-Entropy)48" x 32" polyurethane, enamel, India ink, and other on birch panel, 2007

ETrn_b (Peer Under Covered Trails)48" x 32" polyurethane, India ink, food coloring, and other

on birch panel, 2007

518 julia street, new orleans, la 70130

504.525.0518 www.gallerybienvenu.com

LwNG_b (Centerpiece), 2008, detail48" x 32" polyurethane, plastic, rubber, ink and other on birch

ARTWORK © JOHN PATRICK SALISBURY 2008CATALOG © GALLERY BIENVENU 2008