Painted by Memory (A new lease on life leads to an artist's flurry of productivity) - Creative Loafing - by Megan Voeller - 11/1/06
Joseph Patrick Arnegger will be showing new paintings at Greene Contemporary the month of November with an opening preview Friday, November 3 from 6 to 9PM. The exhibition will continue on view Saturday, November 4 through Saturday, November 25. The gallery will closed Thanksgiving Day Thursday November 23.
Arnegger's work synthesizes issues of realism and abstraction. Aspects of his work recall elements of American Pop art as well as some ideas of the concurrent nouveau réalisme (new realism) in France, although Arnegger is less directly recycling urban or advertising images. His work is more romantic and nostalgic for a way of painting and a way of life that has vanished. Arnegger often chooses images of popular culture from the past that resonate in the culture of the present. While characters or figures in his paintings may appear iconic, for him, the references are personal. He has "memories for people" such as his grandparents who helped form who he is.
Arnegger is committed to gesture and to texture. He likes to "have a relationship with his materials." He "loves pushing paint around." For him "drawing is about illusion and paint is about the surface." He often starts a composition with paint or pencil using a circular mark that is an abstraction of a halo motif. It could be a nimbus or an egg shape or a form that reminds him of a cloud. "Clouds have a mystic quality" for him. He sees them often in Sarasota - "the big clouds coming from the east." And the clouds remind him of Montauk where as a child he flew in and out of them with his grandfather who was a pilot who flew with the Royal Air Force during World War II.
Arnegger has always been interested in film and television. He sometimes constructs his work by juxtaposing several panels together in a manner that resembles the "jump cut" or the way that unrelated stills are spliced next to each other in film that is being edited. He wants the viewer to craft a story that bridges the gap between his seemingly unrelated panels of painted images.
His paintings are objects. They are constructions. Arnegger uses materials such as found wood or industrial metals for the foundation of his paintings. These elements already have a history of their own. He does not want his work to look new. He wants them "to look like no one has touched them." This patina endows his new paintings with a presence that is complexly nuanced, richly layered and boldly powerful.
Born in Boston in 1969, Arnegger grew up in Connecticut, New York and Florida. He graduated from Ringling School of Art & Design in Sarasota in 1994.
(Quotations are from a conversation Mark Ormond had with Joseph Arnegger at his studio June 21, 2006)