Kevin Ford
Daniel Herwitt
you think, you know
February 10–March 17, 2024
Opening reception Saturday, February 10, 3–5 PM
Artist discussion led by Robert Storr Saturday, March 2, 3 PM
In you think, you know artists Kevin Ford and Daniel Herwitt are brought together through their vivid color palettes and the ability to skew that which is familiar to call into question that which we know empirically and that which we understand intuitively. In Ford’s soft-focus paintings, mundane moments and objects become dreamlike, while Herwitt’s hallucinatory illustrations seem to have their own pulse pulling the viewer into worlds, within worlds, within worlds.
Artist discussion with Turley Gallery exhibiting artists Kevin Ford and Daniel Herwitt with guest moderator Robert Storr.
Video by Zach Durocher.
Kevin Ford, Stretchies, 2023, acrylic on panel, 24 x 18 inches
Kevin Ford
Much of the discourse throughout the history of painting centers around its surface. While seemingly flat and two-dimensional, a painting’s surface is a tablet that records time and experience. To me, the medium of painting also exists in the 4th dimension. The marks accumulated on a surface in a distinct combination and in a particular order, over time, form a record of a perceptual, lived experience. Even when what has accumulated through the course of building a painting has been completely obliterated by the time the painting assumes its final visual form, those initial fruitless paths still exist as a part of the painting’s history.
As the paint begins to coalesce into areas of color, it transforms not only physically but also metaphysically. It is not a straight line, there is a circuitous route taken in finding these forms. There is painting over, wiping out, destruction, and addition, until the image is sufficiently real, meaning that it represents a sensation of an experience of the object or experience. My interest lies in sustaining an awareness of this constant transient state.
The images and objects that occupy my paintings emerge and dissolve as they are remembered, experienced, and internalized. Each painting is devoted to a single motif and the sequence of images gives the impression of a picture book, or of an inventory of a sensory universe. Objects hover in and out of focus capturing how our eyes hold onto things, release them, and return to them once again. A tension emerges between documentation and illegibility as I attempt to bring the viewer into an experience of discovery that mirrors my experience of making. The haziness of forms reinforces the remoteness of original memories, and it is these reminiscences that my paintings seek to capture.
Kevin Ford, Pink Bell Flowers, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16 inches
Kevin Ford is a painter living and working in Connecticut. He has had solo exhibitions at Hesse Flatow (New York, NY); Gallery 12.26 (Dallas, TX); Galerie Semiose (Paris, FR); Kate Werble Gallery (New York, NY); and Tops Gallery (Memphis, TN). Ford’s work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at Haricot Gallery (London, UK); Primary Projects (Miami, FL); The Center for Maine Contemporary Art (Rockland, ME); Inman Gallery (Houston, TX); Reyes Finn (Detroit, MI); Casey Kaplan Gallery (New York, NY); The Islip Art Museum (East Islip, NY); IRL Gallery (New York, NY); Marquee Projects (Bellport, NY); Subtitled NYC (Brooklyn, NY); Tops Gallery (Memphis, TN); Essex Flowers (New York, NY); among others. He has completed an edition of handmade paper pieces in collaboration with Dieu Donné (Brooklyn, NY).
Ford’s work has been featured in V magazine, Serendipity magazine, Scholastic Art magazine, included in the book Artists II, by Jason Schmidt, published by Steidl, and has been reviewed in ARTFORUM, The New York Times, Burnaway, Two Coats of Paint, and other publications. He is the recipient of a Paul Harper Residency Fellowship for excellence in painting from Yale University, a project Grant from the Carriage House Gallery at the Islip Art Museum in NY, a Denis Diderot Artist-in-Residence Grant from the Chateau Orquevaux Artist Residency, and he is a Core Residency fellowship recipient from Millay Arts. Ford has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, the Chateau Orquevaux Artist Residency in Champagne-Ardenne, France, and at Millay Arts, Austerlitz, NY. He received his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University and his BFA in Painting from Boston University. Ford is also the founder and director of Fish Island Gallery, an artist-run seasonal alternative exhibition space located on a deserted island in the Long Island Sound off the coast of southwestern Connecticut.
Daniel Herwitt, Sunday’s Roast, 2024, acrylic, watercolor, ink, colored pencil, and charcoal, 35 x 30 inches
Daniel Herwitt
With this new body of images primarily from my imagination, my work explores anxiety and labor expressed through the familiar and supernatural. I am using the processes of cartooning and Netherlandish painting to establish an environment of lurkers and destitute surrounded by everyday bric-a-brac.
Within the landscape and still life framework, confused fruit, discarded beer cans, and aggravated cigarettes converse in another realm. I use various media to achieve the desired density in creating my work, relying on impulse. Cartoon expressions are not only faces but modifies that imbue emotion and warning.
Working through these images, I gain a tighter grasp on picture making and the overall vibrancy I attempt to establish, especially my obsession with shading. These representations of diametrically opposing realities expand upon the subject of impermanence; all this indicates that my interests revolve around the passing of time.
Daniel Herwitt, GULP, 2024, acrylic, watercolor, ink, colored pencil, and charcoal, 26.5 x 40 inches
Daniel Herwitt (b. 1986, Teaneck, NJ) graduated with an MFA from Yale in 2013, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Daniel’s psychedelic artwork has been featured in several exhibitions and sought-after by many musicians including Lady Gaga, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, and most-notably Grateful Dead. His work has also been featured in several publications including Tashcen’s Library of Esoterica series, Plant Magick, released in 2022, along with another Turley artist, Casey Jex Smith.
More insights to Daniel’s practice can be found on Instagram @sunflower_form.
Installation photography by Spencer House Studio