Yin-Yang
Trevor Shimizu
If one allows that a painting is an empty container into which any content may be placed, then what happens when trad-landscape is placed into said vessel?
Given the success of Trevor Shimizu’s landscapes – it’s difficult to argue against their pure pleasurableness – the answer would seem to be : an impossible-object-like thing; a great painting, a series of great paintings….
Shimizu complicates this equation in the present body of work by adding another layer of self-reference; painting on top of his now-signature-landscapes, outlines of figures that picture both his family at play as well as his pre-landscape-era-paintings themselves.
A humorist at heart; these new paintings are funny to one conversant in the artist’s vocabulary and, maybe, also, to those who are not.
The exhibition was intended to be a two-person project with Dan Graham and Trevor Shimizu; out of respect for the wishes of those representing the Estate of Dan Graham that project has been postponed to a later date.