David Slovic

Artist's Statement

A native of Chicago, I studied fine arts and philosophy at Cornell University before coming to Philadelphia to study architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and work with Louis Kahn. I had my own architectural practice, first as FRIDAY Architects, then as David Slovic Associates. Art work and photography have always been an essential part of my efforts. My photographic work began with the book, American Diners (1980), then evolved through architectural exhibitions that included installations, collages, drawings and photography shown in national and international venues including The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1978), La Biennale di Venezia (1980), PS1, Contemporary Art Center, New York (1981), Yale University (1982) and Lisbon Trienale di Architectura (1999).

Over the past 25 years, my time has been focused on making art works using a variety of simple materials manipulated through the investigation of light, movement, time, abstraction and form including photographic collages, paper assemblages/sculpture and videos. The materials are saved, collected and repurposed to produce complex images starting with a single shape. The performance of small and repetitive gestures to build each work reflects a larger metaphor of continuous return.

The photographic collages use abstract photographs of light. Multiple chromogenic prints, from an original negative, are combined to create a unique whole. Using photography’s capacity to be reproduced, multiple prints of the same image are used as individual marks that cover, overlap and expose different aspects of the same view. The original image is deformed, obscured and twisted. Hundreds of individual prints unite in the depth and movement of the flat photographs.

The shadow painting and drawing uses canvas or repurposed collages in a technique using incremental growth and the act of revealing and concealing. The support plane is covered with many tape pieces each acting as a miniature stencil. Painted over with acrylic paint or gesso, the tape pieces are pealed away revealing hundreds of “windows” onto the original support. The resulting surface resonates as a reverse image that refers to and repeats the photographic process.

The paper pieces are made with white, artist’s paper tape finished with clear, acrylic medium and/or gesso. Each individual morsel of paper is used in a collective whole. Ideas lead to form and become objects: entities with their own presence. The work manifests a concentration of space, light and form. The paper has an evocative physical presence and luminosity. This simple material suggests frailty and is expressive of a transient vulnerability, the imperfect and impermanent. Chance circumstances and endless repetitions become ordered by the insistence of a greater whole. Repetitive but never the same, its structure evident, its form is united by the commonality of the pieces. The physical reality acknowledges the myriad of arbitrary interconnections which give the larger form resonance.

The videos, considered as painting that moves, have sequence without time. They are continuous without beginning or end. Numerous iterations show repetitions where each one is the same, but not exactly. All the iterations are looped and play continuously. Most often the video brings attention to a motion of a recognizable form dissolving into chaos before re-forming to begin again from its origin. Shown on a wall mounted flat screen monitor, the video is not watched like a program but rather viewed as a painting.

My work explores the nature of abstraction, a process that moves freely between the real, the imaginary and the symbolic engaging both the intellect and emotions. In each media the work is “in motion” where the viewer’s eye, having little place to rest, moves over the surface and never seems to stop. The whole orders the plurality of the pieces.

The work is about light, about form, order, time, chaos, chance, movement, random systems, systematic randomness, about process, parts of a whole, about wholes made of parts, about imbuing material with spirit, understandings and essential assumptions.

The work has been in numerous group shows including Bridgette Mayer Gallery and Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Lori Bookstein Fine Art and June Bateman Gallery, New York; Hunterdon Museum of Art and Monmouth Museum, New Jersey; and Delaware Museum of Art, Wilmington. Solo exhibitions include the Philadelphia Art Alliance (2002), East-West Gallery, New York (2003), the Gershman Center for Arts and Culture, Philadelphia (2006), Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia (2010) and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington (2015).