Jason Duval Interiors

Jason Duval first solo show in Germany.

DC OPEN 2018. Sept 07

Jason Duval’s paintings explore the expressive potential of abstract form and pictorial space. Figural fragments and architectural remnants coalesce, collapse and manifest in a cubo-surrealist-inspired space. Painterly materiality and the suggestion of narrative time make tangible Duval’s conception of painting as an occasion for pleasurable or melancholic reflection.

Looking inward lately tends toward escapism, which shuns contemplation. Duval’s understanding and usage of interiority is provocatively unfashionable. His paintings, in their vulnerability and reticence, do not give away anything, do not aim to please, nor do they want to displease. They are sincere and searching, as a matter of fact.

Abstraction, reflection and interiority are the paramount themes in Duval’s recent works. Subtle arches and soft frames are backdrop to the painter’s forms, which vacillate from biomorphic to rectilinear and are highly suggestive. Compositions have an awkward grace that resists stasis.
Passages of painterly gesture and linear drawing intertwined, encourage the eye to travel in shallow modernist space as form and content unfold in time. Evident is a profound concern for meaning and space in abstraction.

Installation view images by Achim Kukulies.