Introduction:
Dennis Hollingswoth’s work seems like the theatericalization of its making, where each element of the process -- layers of paint, the movements of the artist’s hand, brushstrokes, daubing and scraping, spiky balls like chestnut shells, the shadows of them, colors and tonality -- is played out lively, releasing energy and arresting the viewer’s eyes. Seemingly infinitively diverse textures and luscious images created not only by brushes, but also by palette knifes, squeegees, and the tools made of the cardboards created by the artist, suggest Hollingsworth’s curiosity and pleasure in his artistic practice. But his process also has rigorous aspect as well. “Wet on wet”, where a wet brush moves into a wet field, requires working against the drying time of the paint. All of planning, chance, deliberation, and intuition involve in the process.

In the late 80’s and the early 90’s, when Hollingsworth graduated, postmodernism that focused on theories and concepts was dominant. Hollingsworth wanted to take “embodiment”, which was denied by these attitudes, back to art, and started his explorations into the inexhaustible possibilities of the medium of paint. While regarded as an abstract painter, for Hollingsworth the abstraction and representation are two sides of the same human efforts of seeing marks as images. The possibilities that lie between them and the interchangeability, and the resulting expansion of the imagination are more important to him. Hollingsworth states that “all I want is a way to enter into a painting”, and “I really don’t want to know the painting in its totality before I apply the first mark on canvas”. Discovery is the core of his artistic practice.

Concept:
Hollingsworth refers to his painting as moving “not in a linear fashion”, but in something similar to W. B. Yeats’s “widening gyres”. In other words, his methods and styles do not replace each other, but they grow and develop along with each other. Hollingsworth’s ambition is to forever grow his vocabulary in painterly terms. This exhibition features “stripe” and “text”, the most recent addition to the vocabulary, along with “wet on wet” described above. “Stripe” is an evolution of what earlier were simple excavations of paint. “Text” involves in both the stencil process and scribing, and are extracted from the artist’s words on his web log. The exhibition will be held both at Tomio Koyama Gallery Kyoto and TKG Editions Kyoto (in the same building), and approximately 12 works, including the paintings and the works on paper, will be on view.

Artist Biography:
Born in Madrid, Spain in 1956, Hollingsworth completed his undergraduate degree at California Polytechnic State University in 1985, followed by his MFA at Claremont in 1991. He currently lives and works between Tossa de Mar, Spain and Los Angeles.

He has held many exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Germany, Holland, France, and Spain among other countries. This is his sixth exhibition at Tomio Koyama gallery following after 4 years (previous shows: 1997, 1999, 2002, 2004, and 2007).

* The text provided by Tomio Koyama Gallery.

Period: Saturday, October 1 - Saturday, November 5, 2011
Venue: Tomio Koyama Gallery, Kyoto
Opening reception: Saturday, October 1, 2011, 18:00 - 20:00
Artist talk: Saturday, October 1, 2011, 17:00 -