David is a visual artist and Professor of Art at Carleton College. His work in painting, installation, and mixed media (including repurposed refuse like cardboard, sticks, sheetrock and Styrofoam) addresses everyday paradoxes of perception, and larger questions that arise from them. Much of the work explores the blurry boundary between the human-built environment and the natural world.
David grew up in Nashville, TN and was a member of the quasi-legendary pop combo The Young Nashvillians. He received a BA from Carleton College and an MFA from the University of Illinois in Chicago. Recent solo exhibits include “Other Positioning Systems” at the Rochester Art Center, and “Facilities and Grounds” at the Carrie Secrist Gallery in Chicago. His paintings of trompe l’oeil wall fixtures appeared in “Lifelike” at the Walker Art Center the Spring of 2012. His work is represented in several collections, including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Langen Foundation in Neuss, Germany, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami.
Artist Statement:
Terrain Vague features paintings that depict invented views of ever-present but frequently overlooked segments of the landscapes we inhabit.
Each work starts with a ground of poured latex that mimic both organic topographic features and expressive Modernist abstraction. This layer serves as the literal ‘grounds’ for topographical or representational features. The ‘figure’ or foregrounded layer consists of deadpan, aggressively yet clunkily literal depictions of ancillary features of our surroundings.
These paintings reflect a consistent and insistent interest in all my work of a reconsideration of the environments we inhabit. Because we are so immersed in a mediated world, our ‘reality’ includes ideal forms, imagined worlds, the mythical and historical past, illusions and abstractions as much as it does what we glean directly from our senses. Most of my work draws attention to these conundrums- I’m continually exploring the nuances of the odd perceptual circumstances I find myself in.