GROUP SHOW—THE MULTIPLICITY OF DONALD DAHLKE

Yes, the title is intentional.  It wouldn’t take one long walking the circumference of San Miguel artist Donald Dahlke’s Group Show exhibit to understand the title.  There surely will be innumerable inquiries during the exhibit as to how one man can create such a myriad of different artwork.  Hopefully the following will be a good enough start to understanding the multiplicity of Dahlke.

It truly takes an artist to confront one with the intricacy of our inner workings.  Walking the room of Dahlke’s exhibit it is as if the artist self-dissects himself for all to see.  First, we see the diligent, studied, figurative work of the disciplined student of art.  There are perfect lines and clear color palates and proportion and perspective.   There is a controlled passion felt in this work and there is a break from pure representational painting with the ever slightest surrealist element in the image, only noticeable upon closest inspection. 

The next wall at first appearance seems like a 180 degree change: color is gone, so is perspective, canvas is replaced with cardboard and some strange, playful characters appear with intermingled bodies, multiple heads and arms; the contrast is stark.  This definitely is a different Dahlke than the first pieces, but there is an underlying unifying element that relates the two styles.

The next wall fortunately isn’t the curve ball that sends you to a room with padded walls.  In this group of work the figure is still there but now the ink and paint are gone and we are confronted with photography.  It is a face I recognize (that of artist, Miguel Angel Morales), or at least I am sure that it is his eyes and smile I see, but deconstructed and put back together in a way that makes the most sense to Dahlke.  Now, not only is the artist deconstructing himself, he starts to deconstruct others much the way we tend to deconstruct and reconstruct the people we meet into our own personal narrative of whom we think they are. 

Wandering beyond the space of the walls, in the center of the room are placed some brightly colored boxes.  Upon further examination, the boxes reveal themselves as cereal boxes, slightly-blasphemous (especially if your deity is Capitalism), hilarious, reconstructed cereal boxes parodying the ills of society.  These have been on display before at the Kuntshaus several years ago and were San Miguel’s first introduction to Dahlke’s work.  The poigniant humor of this Dahlke paints a picture of a rebellious teenager trapped in the body of a breadwinning artist. 

The final Dahlke wall is quite the wake-up call.  It’s a bombardment of colors, shapes, textures and materials in some of the most unusual presentations I have yet to experience.  The complete abstraction of one of the artist’s many personalities reveals itself unto the public in two and three dimensions.  The techniques used here span from handmade to mechanically generated and the theme is left open for interpretation.  There is a warmth to this Dahlke; an Earthiness of sort.  There is a sereneness and closure to the reach of the journey of self-discovery.  It seems to be a medium that allows a melding of his former Oregonian self with his more recent San Miguel incarnation. 

The show opens with a cocktail reception with the artist Saturday, February 6, 2010 at 5PM at Galeria/Atelier in Fabrica La Aurora.