[NEohioPAL] Randall Tiedman & Doug Utter at Arts Collinwood Gallery

[Sarah Gyorki]

Randall Tiedman and Douglas Max Utter, 1987-2009
Arts Collinwood Gallery, 15605 Waterloo Road, Cleveland, OH  44110 
  
When: September 11 – October  3, 2009 
Where: Arts Collinwood Gallery 
15605 Waterloo Road,  Cleveland 
216.692.9500 www.artscollinwood.org 
  
Randall Tiedman and Douglas Max Utter are among Cleveland’s most memorable living artists. Both have pursued painting single-mindedly for the past three decades (and more), developing highly distinctive, psychologically fraught manners of expression. Wayfaring Strangers brings together a selection of works representing different aspects of their techniques and thought. 
In his relatively recent series of acrylic landscapes Tiedman seems to discover, rather than merely depict, darkling plains of Miltonic breadth, often hinting of vast man-made structures – highways, arenas, factories, set amid rivers and distant hills. Dream-like, tenuous forms snap into sharp detail, describing a world both familiar and alien, like a vision of a distant human future, or new construction on the banks of hell. 
Utter’s often large-scale paintings in a variety of mediums ranging from spray paint to tar examine the history of the human image in European painting, filtered through the people and places of his own life; they evoke the weight of spiritual presence as it haunts the material world. 
Tiedman (who is included in the latest edition of the national publication New American Painting) notes that his current work reflects some of the concerns and insights of Situationism and the thinking of theorist Guy Debord. Tiedman’s explorations parallel the errant wandering typical of the Debordian “derive” and the research techniques of so-called psychogeography, which attempt to re-discover the world through techniques that short circuit preconception. Tiedman describes his work this way: "A low shoreline; air glazed like amber; derricks and jetties above brown water; the silver geometry of a petrochemical complex, a Vorticist assemblage of cylinders and cubes superimposed upon the distant tableau of mountains … the unique clarity of the light; fluted tablelands and jigsaw bastions; the limitless neural geometry of the landscape."  
Utter (who has been reviewed in Art in America) is interested in the Jungian idea of archetypes –  structural templates set deep in the mind, ordering emotional experience and development. Similarly, in recent works (which are often created by pouring paint and letting it crack, then drawing in relation to this ground) he is concerned with the layering and accumulation of time in painting, and the philosopher Henri Bergson’s idea of “Duration,” which emphasizes an intuitive, subjective understanding of time and movement. 
Works by Tiedman and Utter can be found in numerous collections, including the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve.      
 
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This chance to see Randall Tiedman's work in an intimate local gallery is particularly attractive, given  an array of recent awards and honors: 
Randall has three paintings in the recent juried exhibition at the Erie Art Museum, and another two in the National Butler Mid-Year exhibition.  He won the National Arts Program's "Best in Show" in April 2009, was awarded a Special Mention in the Wasmer Gallery's juried exhibit, and received both Best in Show and  First Place Painting at Fairmount Center for the Arts.  His work is featured in the latest edition of New American Paintings, due in  bookstores Sept 23, 2009, and also in the 15th Anniversary Edition of New American Paintings.  He won Best Painting in the Zeitgeist 09 juried competition and will have his work on display at the Bang & Olufsen Galleries in New York, Frankfurt, Germany and Istanbul, Turkey.  Save the airfare and see this terrific body of work here in Collinwood.  It's not too late to add an original Randall Tiedman to your collection!



Sarah Gyorki 
Executive Director 
Arts Collinwood 
216-692-9500 
s.gyorki at artscollinwood.org
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