"With an impressive array of rendering styles and surface textures, and a healthy dose of sleight of hand, Wendell Gladstone lures you into his mysterious dreamscapes. He invites you to join a program already in progress, your eyes racing to take in a drama that is unfolding in multiple dimensions." CHAIN REACTION, 2018 | Variable edition embossment with printing ink and nine colors of pearlescent powders
Artist’s Statement / How the work was made
Artist’s Statement:
The central figure in “Chain Reaction” carries a sack of cobbled stone while a whirlwind of unfurling limbs and snapping chains spiral toward a climactic explosive thrust of a high heel pump and a radiating kiss goodbye from a series of floating lips. A portrait of Sisyphean liberation from a personal prison.
About Wendell Gladstone: Based in Los Angeles, Gladstone produces figurative paintings that evoke dream-like spaces, free from logic that pertains to traditional representation. He uses allegory and metaphor to examine a wide swath of cultural references from contemporary politics, art history, and personal experience, allowing psychological mood to govern the narratives over concrete reality. With a bright, often candy-colored palette layered with transparent mediums that subtly reveal the forms beneath, his works immediately seduce the viewer and only later reveal psychologically charged subtexts.
Wendell Gladstone (b. 1972, Boston. Lives and works in Los Angeles) received his BA at Brown University, an MFA in Painting at Claremont Graduate University, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.