Anna Poplawska
Wednesday Journal
August 2004 

The metaphysics of artist Ken Dubin
Ken Dubin's "Emergence / Burial ... Series" is on exhibit at Concordia University's Ferguson Gallery. The works are done primarily in white representing the ethereal, invisable-to-the-eye nature of the phenomena Dubin portrays. There are touches of color, often tan or black, but much of the surface variety comes from texture rather than color.

A Source of Origin" has close to no color at all. It's the scratches on the surface,directed up and out, that give the work its explosive quality, associated with the Big Bang Theory. Though the size of the picture is a mere 12-by-9 inches, the lines continue through to the edge of the canvas, suggesting the huge size of the event and an arbitrary end to the canvas itself. The picture frame is only a small window onto what it might have been like.

"Continually," on the other hand, uses the texture of the brush strokes themselves, horizontally across the page, to create a sense of time moving at a tremendous speed. In the background are long, interweaving, dark strands, whose vertical set slows the motion down. These strands suggest the interlocking, interdependent strands of human relationships and the material word, which exist within the fluid of time and change.

"Passage of Time" is actually two canvases set side by side within the frame. On the right is a weave of horizontal and vertical lines that form a series of small boxes that might be seen in a calendar. There is a contrast being set up here. On the one hand is the natural flow of time, in and of itself. On the other, we are presented with time mediated by the slow, stodgy movement of matter; time that has been broken up, categorized, counted.

"Primordial Unfolding" is Dubin's most colorful work, with the white tinted in green, a color especially associated with life and nature. It has interwoven lines, similar to those in "Continually," but here they are softer and less defined, like wisps of life coming into being. The use of colors- blues, greens, and browns-further suggests the emergence of life and helps to define the primary contrast in the series. White represents metaphysical phenomena, while color suggests earthiness.

The exhibit is unique on a technical level for its lack of color and use of texture to communicate a realm of ideas. However, there is also something rather cold about the show. It is primarily about the intellect and lacks a corresponding emotional depth. "Primordial Unfolding" is probably the most interesting piece shown, as well as the easiest to identify with; I suspect it's not a coincidence that it's also the one with the most color.

Ferguson Gallery
Concordia University
River Forest, IL

Garrett Holg
New Art Examiner
January 1989  
 

Ken Dubin
Intervals of cataclysm and calm punctuated this recent exhibition of paintings by Ken Dubin.  Focusing on selections from the past two years, it featured ten untitled, mixed-media works on canvas and paper from the artist's ongoing "Emergence Burial" series. Characterized by explosive,volcanic like eruptions and crude, vaguely biomorphic forms often interred beneath layers of white overpainting, these works presented a cyclic narrative about things brought forth and things reclaimed.

The earliest paintings in the show, dating from 1986, were also the most violently conceived.  Their fulminating vistas, scarred with dark sooty pores and seething fissures seem like primordial landscapes brutalized by the spasms of their own becoming. Caught in a perpetual state of convulsive genesis, a few of Dubin's curious forms, some resembling prickly protozoal masses, force their way to the surface, while others are trapped just below it, nothing more than faint grayed blotches under a suffocating white acrylic skin.

Although the show was not arranged in a chronological fashion, there was nevertheless a sense of passage. In the more recent paintings, the intensity of Dubin's fermenting images and coarse mark making begins to settle down. His surfaces become quieter and less labored in these works. The dense, agitated staccato of his short jabby strokes gives way to the long wavy lines.

In the most recent work, a large unsigned canvas, the generative fury of these landscapes is almost spent. Dubin's use of white becomes purer and more expansive, enveloping the work in a numbing stillness. Even the fanned out lines of the explosive bursts have become fragile and vulnerable looking, like bare brittle twigs stuck in a snowdrift. Achieving a tranquil poetic effect, the mood of this spare and powerful work is not unlike that evoked by the late tonalist snowscapes of John Henry Twachtman. Like them, it is pervaded by a sense of dormancy and silence that is infused with a spiritual air.

Dubin has been working toward a clarification of his ideas in this series for quite some time, and it is finally paying off. These works are basic and moving, like the dramas of origin and return that they depict.    

Reicher Gallery
Barat College
Lake Forest, IL

Elizabeth Carrara
Art Prose
1989  
 

 The "Emergence/Burial Series," Ken Dubin's current exhibit at Barat College's Reicher Gallery, features paintings that strike a balance between immediacy and structure. Dubin's large oils on canvas and paper reveal his preoccupation with process. White predominates in all of his work making a backdrop for the manipulation of marks and serving in place to partially block out patches of color in layers beneath. 

  The paintings have a common theme, suggestive of landscape. Horizontal lines suggest furrows in snow and sketchy reed like marks imply clumps of grass.  But the works are abstract enough to allow for other interpretations. They also allude to the process of drawing and in fact, resemble drawings that have been worked on, rubbed out, erased and reworked. This emphasis on process and change is contained in each image; the artist does not conceal decisions arrived at during the making of the work and scrawled lines and ghostlike areas of color can be distinguished through many films of paint. Dubin's compositions are carefully balanced, however their skins of built-up paint alternating with spontaneous and crayon marks create a beautiful surface and impression of controlled energy. The artist's color sensibility is subtle; gray, muted yellow, red and black compliment the ubiquitous white. 

  The show also features a series the artist calls Fragments, small mixed-media works on paper. Dubin derives inspiration from the accidental in these images, sometimes using fragments torn from larger paintings. The fragments are more varies from the larger pieces in both color and composition; in isolating parts of larger works, Dubin encourages the viewer to compliment them for their accidental beauty.

  As the title of his show suggests,Dubin seems to see the process of painting as analogous to the cycles of deterioration and rebuilding that come with the passage of time. This is a traditional concern of artists. Dubin interprets the idea in a fresh way with this sensitive work. 

Reicher Gallery
Barat College
Lake Forest, IL