The Painted Room: Chris Dorosz

April 15 to June 3, 2007

Dr. Douglas Wright Education Gallery

In his practice Dorosz regards the primacy of the paint drop, a form that takes shape not from a brush or any human-made implement or gesture, but purely from its own viscosity and the air it falls through, as analogous to the building blocks that make up the human body (DNA) or even its mimetic representation (the pixel). With this in mind he has been working towards creating a narrative of materials as the groundwork to explore changing ideas of human physicality in an age pushing towards virtual reality.

His most recent work comprises of a series of sculptural paintings titled 'stasis series' in which fallen paint drops are trapped in a grid work of clear vertical rods. Through the viewer's movements in aligning and de-aligning these pixel-like paint drops, full body portrait (avatar) forms materialize and dematerialize. The work is meant to reflect the tenuous nature of the physical world where any moment life as we know it might just collapse into a pool of droplets or drift upwards into the astrosphere.

The Painted Room continues this idea from the stasis series taking it to its natural conclusion on a much larger scale. Differing slightly in technique, this time splotches of paint will cling to a forest of thin vertically strung fishing line to recreate a to-scale living room setting.

Materia Prima

Painted Room - detail

There are many 'what-ifs?' converging in the piece:

What if a pixel was a paint drop?

What if everything was made from the same substance?

What if a form could exist as solid and transparent at the same time?

What type of truth lies beneath the meaning we ascribe to surface?

Dorosz underscores the paradox that he finds fascinating between the cold hard grey matter of a purely material existence and the veneer of meaning we ascribe to things - the narrative. Ultimately this is a spiritual struggle located within the medium itself.

What is particularly exciting about this piece is the viewer's significance as an element in the work. As viewers walk around the work they will appear through the vertical interruptions of paint splotches on fishing line to viewers on opposite sides as sliced fragments, providing apparitions of a human presence within the room. The work expands his practice in both scale and concept; pushing the boundaries of painting past the sculptural and into participatory installation.

Chris Dorosz was born in Ottawa in 1972 & graduated with an MFA from the Nova Scotia School of Art and Design. In 2003 he was the winner of the Royal Bank of Canada's New Painting competition and is presently a full-time Instructor at The Academy of Art College, San Francisco, CA. Chris Dorosz is represented by the Leo Kamen Gallery, Toronto, ON.