More is Found, More is Waiting: Annette Davidek
"Looking at Annette Davidek’s paintings gives one the opportunity to enter another world. Painted with oil on birch panel, they function as portals or windows into a space that is somehow familiar as it is strange."-- Katy Diamond Hamer
"The title of the exhibition, More is Found, More is Waiting, alludes to the nearly endless stratum of life. If we were to conceptually lift the skin, fur, sand of the seabed, numerous paved roads in cities across the globe, what would we find? Buried treasures, discarded pennies, family trees that extend millennia, and more…beyond human perception. For Davidek and many artists, the narrative of obsession is the driving force behind their work. It’s an internal narrative, one they may or may not be aware of, that looks like color and deliciously imprisons the mind until it’s extracted. This drive to want to make something to share with others through semiotic means is not new and expands as far back as the prehistoric age when cave men and women scribbled on stone walls. Davidek’s practice feels fresh, cooling, and encompassing. The mythology of painted space is much more imaginative than virtual space, even if static. Massimiliano Gioni, Artistic Director of the New Museum, once said, 'We need to remind ourselves that contemporary art is first of all a form of conceptual gymnastics, in which we learn to coexist with what we don’t understand.' Maybe it is in this realm of non-understanding where we find something bigger, something better." - Katy Diamond Hamer.
Annette Davidek’s paintings resemble gorgeous biomes, assemblages of dynamic forms float suspended in space as if one was experiencing a dream. Her color-saturated organic shapes reference those of microscopic organisms, yet here they take on their own pattern and color, alluding both to the natural world and the world of the imagination. A closer inspection reveals multiple thinly painted layers of flora and fauna, with some of the figures being only faintly visible in the background, while others dominate the foreground. These layers entice the viewer to look deeper into the work and thus to see what lies behind and within each. The effect of Davidek's paintings is luminous and endlessly interesting.
Annette Davidek creates paintings that look like gorgeous biomes full of naturalistic forms, enticing viewers to enter a domain that is as familiar as it is strange. Variously suggestive of exotic plants and animals, or obscure microscopic organisms, her otherworldly subjects hover in their color-saturated spaces. The artist layers their shapes over one another by applying transparent glazes of oil paint on birch panels. Each layer adds a mysterious sense of depth, inviting the viewer further and further into the shadowy images submerged within, while the shapes in the foreground are rendered in sharper relief. The result suggests nothing less than an enchanted cosmos full of life.
The exhibition’s title, More is Found, More is Waiting, alludes to the “endless stratum of life,” notes art critic Katy Diamond Hamer. As she observes in her essay for the exhibition catalogue, “For Davidek and many artists, the narrative of obsession is the driving force behind their work. It’s an internal narrative, one they may or may not be aware of, that looks like color and deliciously imprisons the mind until it’s extracted. This drive to want to make something to share with others through semiotic means is not new and expands as far back as the prehistoric age when cave men and women scribbled on stone walls.”
Annette Davidek earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and continued her education by earning a Master of Fine Arts at Hunter College in New York. She now lives and works in Brooklyn. The exhibition runs concurrent to Reflections, a show of new resins and photos by Susan Goldsmith.
