Dominic Musa: Talebearer
de boer (Los Angeles) is pleased to present Talebearer, a solo exhibition by Paterson, New Jersey based painter Dominic Musa, his first solo exhibition with the gallery. Musa’s paintings are layered in color, exacting yet loose, producing a contemplative revelation of contrasting liminal spaces. Windows and reflections question the meaning of inside versus outside that echo and contemplate a more sinister underbelly. Moments of idyllic calm offer a reprieve with scenes of skaters dancing on frozen ponds that reflect the barren trees above. A persisting duality remains everclear in each of Musa’s color drenched canvases as they navigate the past and present in tandem with the collective psyche.
A talebearer and a storyteller have equal amounts of liberty and reliability. Musa takes advantage of this position and stretches to effortlessly tow a line between surrealism and fauvism. Dreams meet real world observation and source material producing a combination of invention and memory. Musa reflects back on losing a close relative to dementia where memory dissolves and names become interchangeable. In these labor intensive paintings layers are built up through making new paintings on top of paintings; then scraping, sanding, and starting over. In this process the ground becomes an eraser that isn’t subtractive but rather additive, creating depth and context. Similar to the hypothesis that each time one accesses or recalls a memory they add non objective details due to the loss of concrete details as memories fade.
Dominic Musa (b. 1989) lives and works in Paterson, New Jersey. He received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from the SVA - School of Visual Arts, In New York. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Y2K Group, New York, NY; Taymour Grahne Projects, London, UK; Helena Anrather, New York, NY; Harkawik, New York, NY; Underdonk; Brooklyn, NY; Galerie Nicolas Robert, Montreal, Canada; and Andrea Festa Fine Arts, Rome, Italy. In 2022 Musa was an artist in residence at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME and a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.
Dominic Musa’s paintings fuse his personal experiences via invention, peripheral observation, and recollection with the collective psyche. The paintings pull from personal and found photographs utilizing creation, erasure, time, and ultimately visual meditation. This taps into the subconscious psychological thread grouping the perceived personal, collective ideas and images by forming an internal discourse from the artist onto each viewer. This invites the viewer into Musa’s visual worlds and to participate in a common dialogue through a continual communion or network.