DEMETRIUS WILSON

BAM!

Artist Reception: July 11th, 6-8 PM

July 11th - August 10th, 2024 

Rene Ricard wrote about the struggle of abstracting the puppy from the beast. It was a metaphor about the domestication of pets, but alludes to the challenges of painting quite overtly. On the heels of his MFA thesis show at Hunter University, Demetrius Wilson presents “BAM!” at half gallery, our first solo presentation together.

“I’ve been looking at a lot of Titian and Ruebens for how they handle the blend of man and beast as well as how they capture the beauty of violence,” explains Wilson.

Part of the painter’s exploration here is questioning whether nature on its own can ever devolve into tragedy or is that simply a manmade construct overlaid upon terrestrial circumstances.  In his classic “Against Nature,” Huysmans talks about the only real litmus test for beauty is to put an object next to a waterfall or in meadow bursting with flowers or on the rim of a volcano. Carroll Dunham would argue that when he paints something beautiful he designates it as such for being true. Maybe the basis of both arguments are fundamentally the same.

Demetrius seeks to embrace the non-normative or even animalistic in his application, understanding that strangeness is a pre-requisite for beauty, always painting with the figure in mind and a sense of rebellion.

A life-long fan of Francis Bacon, Demetrius reminds us of the late artist’s idea that “Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life.”

And so Wilson opts to depict this tension of creation at its most primal level. It is only thru socialization that we are taught to abhor the violence of emergence and in denying that aspect of ourselves camouflaging - negating - an essential truth.