J OSH DORMAN

October 21 - November 27, 2004Curated by Paul Auster

c u e a r t f o u n d at i o n

We are honored and grateful to present this exhibition of New York painte r

Josh Dorman, generously curated by novelist Paul Auster. Mr. Auster’s appreci-

ation of Dorman’s work demonst rates how the Fo u n d at i o n ’s eclectic and

discretionary process reveals, naturally but quite unpredictably, each curator’s

own pluralist views.

We appreciate that artists often work tirelessly without thought or concern for

exhibition. CUE is pleased to re co g n i ze such commitment by affo rding this

opportunity, thus celebrating the efforts of artists such as Josh Dorman.

I am not a landscape painte r. My goal is not to depict the way light plays on

t re e tops, but I do want to get inside to see the rings of the trees, ex p l o re the

st r u c t u re of the roots and branches, understand the bark. Late l y, I’ve been

using maps to find my way. I was seduced by these obsolete weathered pages-

--their elegant lines revealing eons of geological shift and ero s i o n - - - a l l

t ra n s l ated by human mind and hand. The risk I was taking and the implied

violation inherent in putting my first marks on the antique paper was bracing. It

brought drawing back into my paintings, erased the horizon line, and provided

me with a ground on which to excavate and impose images. As if I am walking

through nature with a magnifying glass and telescope, I find cells, mushrooms,

thunderheads, pebbles, cliffs, continents

I tilt these flattened lands into the frontal plane and then I seek routes

and valleys back into space. I’m hoping for vertigo. But there is no one way to

lose my balance. I follow a river with ink. I clog a harbor with oil paint. The name

of a town or mountain might re q u i re something more lite ral---Rabbit Hills,

Burning Spring. After the Fall of 2001, I found I needed to erect buildings out of

the grid work of the maps. I could no longer avoid the human pre s e n ce in my

work or continue to invent a pastoral universe.

When I was eight years old, I’d lie on my stomach on my bedro o m

floor and draw with colored pencils in ring-bound sketchbooks. These drawings

( n ow ye l l ow with age) are full of monsters, winged beings, organic machines

with gears and tendrils and bolts of electric current. Drawing on these old

to p o g raphic maps with their sepia mazes returned these lost shapes and

memories to me and provided me with a new framework for painting, a way to

navigate space.

art i s t ’s s tat e m e n t

Four years ago, artist Josh Dorman wa l ked into a used booksto re in Sarato g a

Springs and bought seve ral to p o g raphical maps. It made perfect sense that he

should have been at t ra c ted to these ce n t u r y-old projections of distant and

u n k n own places. Dorman’s re cent work had been largely devo ted to the re n d e r i n g

of imaginary landscapes, little dream worlds that combined re p re s e n t ation and

a b st raction, the re cognizable and almost re cognizable in canva sses of exq u i s i te

refinement and beauty. Call them portraits of an inner homeland, a topos of the

spirit. Now, co n f ro n ted with these maps of real places, a new idea gradually caught

hold of him. It took two full years befo re the impulse ripened into action—and then

he took the plunge.

Working with a pen and co l o red ink, Dorman began inscribing his marks

on the maps themselves, initiating an intense and pass i o n ate dialogue between the

p r i n ted material and his own imagination. Inspired by the swirls and sinuous lines

of va l l eys, by the oddly co n to r ted shapes of mountains and rivers, even by the

wo rds denoting bays and estuaries and towns, Dorman let his hand go wherever it

wa n ted to go, responding to these flat tened-out ideograms by digging deep into

his own unconscious. No plan, no agenda, no co n st raint. If there is a formal method

underlying Dorman’s art, it would be this: You find it in the act of doing it, and each

time you do it, you discover something you hadn’t known befo re.

The map pieces are tantalizing, elusive works. Though small in scale, they

a re difficult to describe, almost impossible to pin down in wo rds, and yet they hold

our at tention in the same way that stories do. So much is going on in them that we

feel compelled to look for a narrat i ve, as if by “reading” the images befo re us we

could finally grasp them in all their co m p l ex i t y. But the story I will read in one of

these pictures is not the same story you will read. More than anything else, that

singularity of response at te sts to the charm and power of these works. On the one

hand, they are ex u b e rant, almost child-like in their energ y. On the other hand, the

dominant feeling they provo ke in us is one of reflection, of meditation. Th e re is no

solution to the myste r y. As Dorman put it in a re cent letter to me: “Ultimate l y, I

paint to find out why I have to paint…in order to see things that wouldn’t ex i st if I

didn’t make them. But I feel sat i s faction only when I am genuinely surprised by

w h at happens. As Braque once said: ‘Th e re is only one thing in art of any va l u e —

t h at which cannot be ex p l a i n e d .’”

Paul Au ster

cu rator’s s tat e m e n t

NEAR THE VILLA OF THE MYSTERIES, 2004

Ink, oil, on antique maps on panel, 32” x 36”

THE FUNNIES, 2003

Ink on antique maps on panel, 34” x 42”

NIGHT FISHING, FOR NELLY, 2004

Ink, acrylic, on antique maps on panel, 50” x 48”

P LY M O, 2003

Ink on antique map on panel, 16” x 18”

E Q UATOR, 2003

Ink on antique maps on panel, 36” x 32”

AT THE END OF THE DAY, 2004

Acrylic, oil, maps on canvas, 65” x 130”

LITTLE APOCALYPSE, 2003

Ink on antique map on canvas, 18” x 14”

FLEDGLING LAMENT, 2003

Ink on antique ledger pages on panel, 34” x 42”

AND LAKE EUNICE, 2004

Ink with maps on 6th grade science drawings by Stanley Dorman (circa 1955), 14” x 16”

THE GANG, 2003

Ink on antique map on canvas, 14” x 18”

A GREAT EGG, 2004

Ink, oil, antique map on canvas, 38” x 34”

P I LG R I M AGE, 2004

Acrylic on panel, 14” x 18”

Josh Dorman was born in Baltimore in 1966. He graduated Skidmore College in

1988, then received his MFA from Queens College in 1992. Dorman’s work has

been exhibited in solo shows at galleries including 55 Mercer in New York City

and Galerie Francoise in Baltimore, and in various group shows, most recently

at The Drawing Center and The National Academy Museum. His drawings and

paintings have been reviewed in Modern Painters, Art in America, and The New

Republic. He works in a studio in Long Island City, and has been granted resi-

dencies at Yaddo and the Millay Colony. He has taught in and around New York,

including Skidmore College, City University and Rider University. He lives in

Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.

art i s t ’s b i ogra p h y

Paul Au ste r’s two most re cent novels are The Book of Illusions ( 2 0 02) and

Oracle Night (2003). His Collected Poems were published earlier this year. He

lives in Brooklyn.

c u rator’ s b i ogra p h y

CUE Art Foundation, a non-profit organization, provides educational programs

for young artists and aspiring art pro fe ssionals in New York and from aro u n d

the co u n t r y. These pro g rams draw on the unique community of artists, critics,

and educators brought together by the Fo u n d at i o n ’s season of ex h i b i t i o n s ,

public lectures, and its in-gallery studio pro g ram. Gallery internships and

stipends affo rd the next generation of art pro fe ssionals intimate, wo r k i n g

k n owledge of the art-making and exhibition pro ce sses. CUE’s 2000 sq. ft.

gallery and offices, located in New York’s Chelsea gallery district, serves as the

base for the various educational programs conducted by CUE.

The Fo u n d at i o n ’s exhibition season gives unknown or under-re co g-

nized artists professional exposure comparable to that offered by neighboring

co m m e rcial galleries, without the usual financial re st raints. CUE does not

promote a particular school of artistic practice or regional bias; we only require

that exhibiting artists must either not have had a solo exhibition in a commer-

cial venue, or have received minimal recent public exposure.

C U E ’s Advisory Council, an honorary group of artists and leading

figures from the arts education, applied arts, art history, and literary communi-

ties, has the responsibility of selecting exhibition curators. The curators, in turn,

n o m i n ate artists to exhibit at CUE, and continue to play a role throughout the

exhibition process, helping the artists catalogue their work for exhibition. Both

the Advisory Council and the exhibition curators actively participate in the

public lectures and educational programs.

c u e a r t fo u n d at io n m iss ion s tat e m e n t

B OAR D OF DI RECTO R S

Gregory Amenoff

Thomas G. Devine

Thomas K. Y. Hsu

Brian D. Starer

A DV I S O RY CO U N C I L

Gregory Amenoff

Vicky A. Clark

William Corbett

Meg Cranston

James Drake

Bruce Ferguson

Sanford Hirsch

Dana Hoey

G A L L E RY DI RE CTO R

Jeremy Adams

G A L L E RY ASS I STA N T

Beatrice Wolert-Weese

AL L AR T WO RK © JOS H DO RMA N

C ATA LOG DES IG N: E LI ZAB ETH E LL IS