Patrick Wilson: Field Sketch

Gallery III

Vielmetter Los Angeles is pleased to present Field Sketch, an exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles- based artist Patrick Wilson. The exhibition marks Wilson’s tenth solo presentation with the gallery and will be on view from February 10 - March 23, 2024.

Comprising works executed from 2022 to 2024, the exhibition presents an array of hard-edged works on canvas that emerge from the artist’s practice as a perceptualist painter. Known for his meticulously painted and improvised compositions, Wilson’s canvases are controlled explosions of seductive, radiant hues emerging from a multiplicity of logic, pleasure, and whim. Throughout the exhibition, and within each painting on view, color and structure remain of primary importance.

The exhibition’s title Field Sketch references the traditional artist activity outside of the studio, as well as a process commonly used in various fields of science, where deeply looking, investigating, and then carefully sketching a subject, leads to a heightened level of observation. While the paintings themselves are not resultant of a traditional field sketch, the perceptual motivations behind the activity are what Wilson prioritizes in his work; slowing down, taking in, and being enveloped by what one is viewing.

Over the last couple of years Wilson has expanded his practice beyond the confines of the singular rectangle shape — choosing to abut and offset two canvases on top of or next to one another in various iterations. These shaped diptychs complicate his exploration of composition and form, in the artist’s words, “there is a pronounced emphasis on the object quality in these paintings; almost a sculptural presence.”

The exhibition features four shaped diptychs, each individually rooted in the possibilities of red, yellow, green, and blue. The dynamism of these paintings is astounding, such as in the piece entitled Dangerous Curves, where the color red in its irreverent beauty, takes on multiple meanings and apparitions — from imperial nobility to quick carnage to erotic silk. In the painting El Dorado — a mostly yellow composition of vertically stacked canvases — a cascading sense of balance and alignment is subtly questioned when disrupted by various contrasting forms and unexpected tinctures.

Also on view are two larger-scale works, Green Dragon and Jacaranda Season, both of which elicit a profound viewing experience in terms of their seemingly simplified layering structure, allowing figure and ground to more clearly establish themselves.

Invoking the exhibition’s title, the artist presents a six panel, spectrum painting, entitled Field Sketch; a dancing continuum of spectral radiance moving from red through violet.

The paintings Extra Sauce and Long Weekend, fan the flames of Wilson’s ability to create multiple paintings within singular works — paintings in which slowly shifting picture planes composed of glowing blocks, held together by an atmospheric tenor, unveil themselves in their own rhythm.

Carefully finessed surfaces of fastidious layers of acrylic paint executed with an underlying trove of sensations, tones, and strategies, Wilson's abstract paintings maintain that everything is in transition and that change is constant, especially the act of seeing. Wilson is an immaculate painter of sincere conviction in painting's ability to provide a respite in a world built on speed, quick glances, diminished attention spans, and unconsidered existence. While acknowledging the complexities of daily life and the way the world is currently taken in, Wilson’s seemingly flawless but decidedly handcrafted paintings provide a place for quietude in which the beholder can once again engage in the pleasures of perception in analog form.