Tom Dowling’s hybrid paintings, constructions and collages are ostensibly simple elegant visual forms: geometric shapes with photographic collages inserted. But beyond this visual simplicity are sophisticated references and points of information. Fragments which reflect and comment upon such complex and ambitious topics as contemporary culture, the tradition and history of art, and the process of human thought.
One of the conspicuous strategies used by artists of the current post-modern epoch has been the eclectic combination of aspects of past movements. Dowling makes very direct references with his titles, even citing specific artists in some cases. And his collaged images are often fragments from historical works of art. A more subtle reference can be found in his choice of shapes and spatial relationships which have roots in many of the early 20th century modernist movements: most notably Constructivism and Cubism. Although most of the references in his work allude to 20th century modernist movements, another favored period of Dowling’s is the Renaissance. One of the most persistent themes in his work is the issue of the illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface – an issue that has been a crux of western painting almost from its inception and was particularly acute in the Renaissance.
But specific references in Dowling’s work are often fleeting, for another strategy he practices is the modernist avant – garde tradition of challenging definitions. Marcel Duchamp exemplified and canonized this strategy by continually creating art, which challenged rules of the art world. Dowling continually shifts directions in his work as defining characteristics arise; changing, for example, from a rectangular and square format to the ovals and arches of his current body of work; he has also at times abandoned a technique of scratching the aluminum surface of his constructions so that the reflection of light creates an illusion of depth.
The original intention of this modernist strategy was to purify art, to reveal the truly essential. This practice by formalist artists in the 20th century resulted in a legacy of simplified imagery from which Dowling is a descendent.
Probably his most direct connection to this legacy is John McLaughlin. McLaughlin was a noted California painter who had a profound impact on a number of California artists _ including Tony Delap, an artist whom Dowling studied under. He divided his canvases into crisp-edged, solid-flatly-painted rectangular bars and shapes, usually black or white [when he did use color he used “neutral” colors which had little specific identity]. His intention was to create works, which existed somewhere in the ether between the traditions of western painting and a philosophical notion of absolute truth – neutral, anonymous structures onto which the viewer could project the spiritual truth which McLaughlin thought to be intrinsic to all humans.
It is within this structure that Dowling’s early work began: At the beginning of his career in the early 70’s he produced a series of hard edge paintings, and in the early 80’s he produced the decendants of this current body of work, a series of paintings on metal. These earlier paintings and constructions relied heavily upon vertical and horizontal rectangles, one of McLaughlin’s hallmarks. Dowling later overlapped these structures with visible brush strokes, the illusionistic depth of his scratched aluminum surfaces and collaged photographic fragments – all elements which McLaughlin would have probably been appalled by, rejecting them as contaminations of pure space.
This overlapping of visual elements represents more than the simple breaking of established esthetic rules. It points out what is perceived by many artists today to be a shortcoming of formalist modern esthetics: in an effort to purify their art McLaughlin and artists of his generation may have cast-off cultural references which are essential to the spiritual truth they sought.
This points to another trend of post-modern artists, the employment of autobiographical information and subject matter.
Although many of the collaged images in Dowling’s work are reproductions of historical artworks, others are found images and photographs he has taken of friends. [Even the images of historical works represent a personal selection process].
The photographic process is something Dowling has a developed understanding of having taught and lectured on the subject. The images represent fragments of time and space and also suggest narratives.
The narrative is also something Dowling has an understanding of having worked in film. In the late 60’s and early 70’s he was a film production assistant and a writer at several studios. Unlike the cinematographic narrative, which gives us constantly changing images, the static arts present us with a solitary moment frozen in time, an exercise which is by nature introspective and has historically been associated with the religious and spiritual.
Dowling takes this tradition and connects it to our contemporary culture, giving us objects of our time onto which we can project the spiritual truth , which artists throughout history have sought.
Mike McGee
OCC Gallery Director
January, 1990