Robert Kingston
NEW PAINTINGS
November 6 - December 6, 2008
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 6, 5:30-7:30 PM
These abstract paintings play on the border of representation tempting the viewer to interpret the images. As no representative image ever coalesces the viewer must default to their own personal mythology to complete the meaning and may thus become activated as an artist and dreamer.
Kingston tries to make the paintings atmospheric as if inside a cloud. Incidental marks, erasures, symbols, ghosts and stains float by in a subconscious stream. Evocative shapes hint at meanings or memories but never fully reveal themselves. A dreamlike quality of slippery and open-ended implication where the viewer must find his or her own equilibrium is what the artist is after.
Though jazz of the 50’s and 60’s is still in Kingston’s studio playlist, it has given way in the last year to the more introspective and calming music of the Shakuhatchi and the more plaintive sounds of Portuguese Fado and the Turkish and Persion oud. The bittersweet nostalgia and melancholy of memory inform the faded palette of these paintings. The sparseness of the compositions and the limited chroma is a further move towards the ephemeral and the dematerialized.
Robert Kingston received his BFA from California State University and MFA from the Claremont Graduate School. Kingston has exhibited at the Ruth Bachofner Gallery in Santa Monica, Riverside Art Museum and the Long Beach Museum of Art.