Daniel Hutchinson at Angell Gallery
Akimbo, March 13th 2012
By Terrence Dick
by Terrence Dick
Given that we are a good decade-plus past the end of the 20th Century, the question, “Is it art?” is one I tend not to wrestle with at the far reaches of the territory we inhabit. So much frontier work has happened in the ninety-five (!) years since Fountain that you really can’t get hung up on anything too out there. We’ve spent so much time out there, you just shrug your shoulders and say, “Sure, it’s art, now let’s get down to business.” However, the same question in the other direction can often pin me to the mat. When the work has all the elements of art and is kind enough to appear in a gallery, the same question might just be a sly way of asking, “Is it good art?” Or, taking the line of inquiry in a subtly different direction, the question could also be, “Is it art or just entertainment?”
[...]
Daniel Hutchison is also non-problematically a painter and his canvases at Angell Gallery are quick to introduce themselves, but hard to get to know. They are all basically black (with another tone occasionally coming through from below) and rely on the play of light across the texture of the brush-strokes in order to capture movement and patterns that evoke (even without the aid of titles) water in various states of agitation. It is undoubtedly a limited palette, but when it works, there’s something sublime in the darkness.
Given that we are a good decade-plus past the end of the 20th Century, the question, “Is it art?” is one I tend not to wrestle with at the far reaches of the territory we inhabit. So much frontier work has happened in the ninety-five (!) years since Fountain that you really can’t get hung up on anything too out there. We’ve spent so much time out there, you just shrug your shoulders and say, “Sure, it’s art, now let’s get down to business.” However, the same question in the other direction can often pin me to the mat. When the work has all the elements of art and is kind enough to appear in a gallery, the same question might just be a sly way of asking, “Is it good art?” Or, taking the line of inquiry in a subtly different direction, the question could also be, “Is it art or just entertainment?”
[...]
Daniel Hutchison is also non-problematically a painter and his canvases at Angell Gallery are quick to introduce themselves, but hard to get to know. They are all basically black (with another tone occasionally coming through from below) and rely on the play of light across the texture of the brush-strokes in order to capture movement and patterns that evoke (even without the aid of titles) water in various states of agitation. It is undoubtedly a limited palette, but when it works, there’s something sublime in the darkness.
