Studio Visits

Painter William DiBello came by the studio today and I visited his space to see the work he's finishing up for a show that opens in September. Will kindly indulged my interest in photographing studios, and the details below are from his workspace along with some reflections on our conversation.

Two paintings from William DiBello's upcoming show at Artspace Liberti

A big part of the fun of studio visits lies in seeing how differently people put together the world. Will had several large paintings underway, and was wrestling with a number of ideas about the paintings relate to prints, about the way screen-vision differs from traditional painting vision, and about systems of distribution in the arts that reenforce social hierarchies. This is a lot to consider. 

Some works one paper at DiBello's studio

Nowadays, it seems that artists are being asked to take on a lot of responsibility for situating their work that formerly belonged to curators and institutions - especially when exhibiting in independent spaces. Will wants to have a wide range of options as an artist (and as a person, I would imagine) and the art world's pressures to construct a unified bodies of work appear to press in on him uncomfortably as he searches for an midpoint between breadth and depth in his work.

Customized tools for working on a monumental scale

Making paintings that are exquisitely calibrated color ideas, Will appears to be searching for ways to connect the huge, almost inherently institutionally-scaled paintings he makes to more democratic conversations and experiences (but really, who besides a bank or captain of industry could fit these canvases in a domestic space?). He described interesting ideas for putting out take-aways with the paintings at the show, stressing how these would not be just reproductions of the pictures, but things in themselves, related to but different from the paintings. In this, DiBello reminded me of Chicago artist Gaylen Gerber, whose monochrome paintings address social spaces as well as (perhaps more than) art historical ideas to which they initially appear connected...

A place for color

But the most arresting thing about William DiBello's painting is their breathtaking color and near-overwhelming sense of too-much-ness. One needn't have a lot of theoretical tools on board to be blown away by a picture like Buzz Field, a tightly-knit abstraction that seems to be unravelling before your eyes. I look forward to his show next month, and appreciated the chance to step into another artist's working space for a few minutes...