ARTIST SPOTLIGHT // JOSH DORMAN'S REFLECTING POOL
Artist Josh Dorman connects us to our past and explores the unlimited possibilities of our future
By Heather Shayne Blakeslee
EXCERPT //
“You’re catching me at a time when the show ended a few weeks ago,” said Dorman, 56, when I spoke with him in March. “During shows I tend to pause a little bit and regroup. And it can be kind of an existential crisis.” He jumps into the deep end of the pool quickly. “I guess what I think about—and it’s not just me—what is in the nature of art? And maybe humans in the larger context? ... Do we make what we’re supposed to make? Am I the paintings that I’m making? [Is this] the fruit that my tree is supposed to bear?”
The uncertainty opens up endless possibilities. His Being series moves and shifts as the viewers try to lock down the subject, and find themselves both drawn to what Dorman calls a “central presence,” yet still searching for hard edges that tell us who—or what—we’re facing. “I think you could see elements of faces, eyes, ears,” Dorman says, “but [they’re] never contained in a solid form, which is kind of how I think of humans, you know?” He explains, “We’re interior/exterior. We’re made of thoughts and memories—as well as cells and teeth.”
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