November 19 — December 23, 2011
Middlebrook’s long-standing interest in abstraction, intersecting disciplines and nature are the cross-currents of his most recent exhibition. For the first time, Middlebrook is presenting an in-depth investigation of a singular body of work: hisplanks. The exhibition also marks the artist’s most abstract body of work to date.Hand-selecting internal cuts of Cury Maple, Redwood, English Elm, and Cairo Walnut tree trunks, Middlebrook laboriously covers the planed façades with repeating geometry in highly saturated pigment. His line-dominant compositions imply infinite extension beyond the bounds of the plank form, confronting and expanding the viewer’s sense of space. Middlebrook’s unprecedented absence of representational imagery heightens the figurative nature of the planks themselves, while allowing for landscape references to dominate the exhibition. Whether colorful or monochromatic, the paintings fluctuate between being harmonious and incongruous with the natural shape, tone and grain of wood. Middlebrook’s planks are a meditation on the complex relationship between humankind and nature, a long-term topic of investigation for the artist.
