©PIERRE DORION/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY, NEW YORK
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©PIERRE DORION/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY, NEW YORK
While those earlier artists took an almost Futurist glee in the forms of the industrial landscape, Dorion’s stance is more minimalist, his imagery more matter-of-fact. There are no flakes of rust, no bubbles in the concrete. This immaculate urban environment might have been created in Photoshop—except for the reality of the paint.
Dorion works from his own close-to-abstract photographs. Sometimes we see on canvas little more than a field of color, subdivided by a few stripes, suggesting the edge of a wall, door, or window. Other times, as in Untitled (FS), 2014, it’s an exhibition space divided by three lengths of yarn, a work by sculptor Fred Sandback. This concept of an artwork within an artwork perhaps implies some form of institutional critique. If so, it’s a gentle one. Dorion’s gaze is unblinking.
A version of this story originally appeared in the September 2014 issue of ARTnews on page 100.