{"id":69874,"date":"2023-10-30T12:28:23","date_gmt":"2023-10-30T18:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=69874"},"modified":"2023-10-31T13:45:57","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T19:45:57","slug":"darryl-erdmann-stands-the-test-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/darryl-erdmann-stands-the-test-of-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Darryl Erdmann Stands the Test of Time"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Darryl Erdmann, “Territories (Diptych),” mixed media, 48 x 72 in.<\/p><\/div>\n


\nIn commercial advertisements, everything is \u201cnew.\u201d The artists who staff Phillips Gallery know <\/span>only too well that the components of art are rarely all that new, and so they change one letter of that adjective, transposing an e for an o and saying \u201cnow.\u201d Or more formally, they label what they exhibit \u201ccurrent work.\u201d Even Darryl Erdmann is careful to state, \u201cI\u2019m doing something different,\u201d which is true, but examples prove that the current work fits quite comfortably alongside the older works that preceded and accompany it.<\/h4>\n

The changes can be seen most readily in \u201cTerritories\u2014Diptych,\u201d which the artist says took him a long time \u2014 he may have said \u201cyears\u201d \u2014 to complete, during which he had the photograph that forms the focus of the overall composition and was determined to find a way to build around it. He might well add that this isn\u2019t a truly new work, in the sense of being a break with the past, but rather an extension of what he\u2019s always done. That is, as he explains in his statement, \u201cimprovising innate conversations between inanimate objects.\u201d That these are daubs of paint and found swatches of visually suggestive material is due in no small part to an art-historical decision that could stand some attention.<\/h4>\n

One of the relatively few genuinely \u201cnew\u201d moments in art occurred around the beginning of the 20th century, when impressionism, cubism, and abstraction, and a number of other \u2013isms<\/i> together broke down the doors of the academy. Among the items they brought with them was collage, in which pre-existing bits of imagery were unceremoniously glued onto the painted canvas. In time, this led to mixed-media, but with a distinction depending on the number of dimensions. To put it too simply, mixed-media can refer to two- or three-dimensional art, but collage usually means two, while assemblage is used with three. Both techniques are widely used to great effect by Utah artists.\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n
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Darryl Erdmann, “Now It Begins,” acrylic on aluminum, 11 1\/2 x 12 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

Erdmann remembers beginning to make art in the ’60s, a socially loose era, but one that art critics were trying desperately to rein in. Clement Greenberg, their loudest voice, said that all painting should be flat, like Jackson Pollock\u2019s. This may help explain why a painting like Erdmann\u2019s \u201cFallen on Deaf Ears\u201d undermines efforts by the viewer\u2019s eye and mind to find its third dimension, a drama that was evident when 15 Bytes looked at it in 2021<\/a>. On the other hand, Pollock\u2019s paintings don\u2019t look all that flat to us today, and neither do Erdmann\u2019s. A good example of his evolution can be seen in \u201cNow It Begins,\u201d where breaks and gaps in the paint make it quite clear that a layer of paint is a real object, one that exists in space, ready for an encounter. Or there\u2019s \u201cVeering Off,\u201d where a smooth shape near the top crumples below, just as happens when gravity presses the top down on what supports it.<\/h4>\n

Artists make choices, and it\u2019s pretty clear that one of Darryl Erdmann\u2019s has to do with the nature of the objects that interact in his paintings. He knows intuitively that the more specific they are, the narrower the audience they speak to will be. He has chosen not to rely on \u201crecognizable imagery,\u201d but it might be said that he \u00a0<\/span>has admitted more \u201csuggestive imagery\u201d over the years. His justification for this is his own, but it speaks to the desires of his colleagues and audience: \u201cThis allows the viewer to participate and interact with the work on a personal level.\u201d Another former goal of art was to be \u201cuniversal.\u201d Like flatness, universality hasn\u2019t stood the test of time, nearly so well as Darryl Erdmann has.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n
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Darryl Erdmann, “Veering Off,” acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

Darryl Erdmann<\/em>, Phillips Gallery<\/a>, Salt Lake City, through Nov. 11<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In commercial advertisements, everything is \u201cnew.\u201d The artists who staff Phillips Gallery know only too well that the components of art are rarely all that new, and so they change one letter of that adjective, transposing an e for an o and saying \u201cnow.\u201d Or more formally, they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":847,"featured_media":69880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[394,157],"class_list":["post-69874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-darryl-erdmann","tag-phillips-gallery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Territories-scaled.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 00:09:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69874"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69887,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69874\/revisions\/69887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}