TOM LADUKE

Tom LaDuke

24 June - 31 July 2021
Miles McEnery Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of recent works by Tom LaDuke, on view 24 June through 31 July 2021 at 525 West 22nd Street. The exhibition will debut nine paintings and one sculpture all created within the last year, and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring an essay by Daniel Spaulding.
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Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, "Tom LaDuke," 24 June - 31 July 2021.
- Tom LaDuke
  With, With Threshing Oar, 2021
  Acrylic on canvas over panel
  31 x 27 inches
  78.7 x 68.6 cm
- Tom LaDuke
  Tongues of Grace, 2021
  Acrylic on canvas over panel
  54 1/2 x 54 1/2 inches
  138.4 x 138.4 cm
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Tom LaDuke in his Studio, 2021, Los Angeles, CA
- Tom LaDuke
  POV, 2021
  Acrylic on canvas over panel
  78 1/2 x 48 inches
  199.4 x 121.9 cm
- Tom LaDuke
  The Blow That Hurts The Ones That Don't, 2021
  Acrylic on canvas over panel
  51 1/2 x 75 inches
  130.8 x 190.5 cm
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TOM LaDUKE

The Proper Channels, 2021

Acrylic on canvas over panel

69 1/2 x 75 1/2 inches

176.5 x 191.8 cm

In "The Proper Channels," LaDuke illustrates a reflection of his studio through a trapezoidal form. The complex abstract layers are set against the industrial lighting and airy architecture of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. The flashes of green in the lower right reflect painter Aaron Curry’s use of bright color. The painterly form adjacent to Curry references Mary Weatherford's densely filled canvases. Situated above is a sculptural representation of Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne" 1523, transformed through 3D software.
TOM LaDUKE

Rain Rereleases, 2021

Acrylic on canvas over panel

65 x 89 inches

165.1 x 226.1 cm

"In a series of recent paintings by Tom LaDuke, hard-to-describe forms occupy a spatial netherworld that is neither entirely here nor there: neither entirely on the flat of the canvas, nor entirely in the spatial grid of post-Renaissance perspective. Those forms erupt in a neutral interior space that bears an uncanny resemblance to the “white cube” of the gallery. When installed in such a real gallery, then, the paintings enframe a second order of neither-nor placelessness: There is a white cube inside the canvas, and the canvas sits in a white cube. The space in which these pictures literally hang is thus doubled by the space in which strange tubes, tree-like structures, rock-like protuberances, proto-figures, or miasmatic nebulae of color precipitate from the atmosphere, somewhat as the paintings themselves (that is, LaDuke’s real paintings) occupy their (real) spatial setting. This atmosphere can be named “the art world”— the gallery space—which means that the forms themselves must be art, since it is hard to imagine them being anything else."

- Daniel Spaulding in "Glint"
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With, With Threshing Oar, 2021, Acrylic on canvas over panel, 31 x 27 inches, 78.7 x 68.6 cm (detail)
TOM LaDUKE

I Watched The Fire That Grew So Low, 2021

Acrylic on canvas over panel

70 1/2 x 92 inches

179.1 x 233.7 cm

"Art grows from the gallery like a tree from soil. In LaDuke’s more recent paintings, there has been a figure-ground inversion of sorts. The “ground” now—which is no ground at all, since it is rather the open space of the virtual—is the architecture of the gallery. And the “figures” are those loopy, tubular, tree-like things or they are other artwork. Ontological disjunction always seems at stake in LaDuke’s work—a sense that orders of reality have crossed into not-totally explainable interference. The logic of phase shift from virtual to real can only be traced after the fact, and maybe not even then."

- Daniel Spaulding in "Glint"
TOM LaDUKE

Cistern, 2021

Acrylic on canvas over panel

74 1/2 x 98 inches

189.2 x 248.9 cm

The painting "Cistern," 2021, incorporates the work of five artists whom LaDuke is inspired by: Arlene Shechet's "A Night Out," 2011, Liz Glynn’s "Untitled (Techne Forest I)," 2019, Olga Koumoundouro’s "Leprechaun Trap," 2013, Monique van Genderen's "Untitled," 2018, and Ruben Ochoa’s "Grounded," 2010. The hourglass figure on the central left reflects the in-between space of Édouard Manet's masterpiece "The Old Musician," 1862.
TOM LaDUKE
Houses of the Holy, 2021
Acrylic on canvas over panel
80 x 124 inches
203.2 x 315 cm
TOM LaDUKE

We Were So Sure We Could Not Be Heard, 2021

Mixed Media, salt, epoxy resin, fruit loops, super glue

Artwork Dimensions: 24 x 31 x 28 inches

61 x 78.7 x 71.1 cm

Pedestal Dimensions: 43 x 13 x 14 inches

109.2 x 33 x 35.6 cm

"We Were So Sure We Could Not Be Heard," 2021, is a hyper-realistic sculpture of an octopus that the artist has been developing for several years; discovering the possibilities and pushing the limits of materials in the pursuit of his vision. Composed of elements such as salt, epoxy, resin, and fruit loops, LaDuke has clothed the etheral sculpture in a minutely exact replica of his own skin.
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Tom LaDuke Studio, 2021, Los Angeles, CA
Tom LaDuke in his Studio, 2017, Los Angeles, CA

TOM LaDUKE (b. in 1963 in Holyoke, MA) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1991 from California State University in Fullerton, CA, and his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1994 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, IL.

Recent solo exhibitions include Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; “New Work,” CRG Gallery, New York, NY; “Candles and Lasers,” Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; CRG Gallery, New York, NY; “eyes for voice,” CRG Gallery, New York, NY; “run generator,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, traveled to Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC; “Auto-Destruct,” Angles Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; “when no one is watching,” Angles Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; “Pattern Seeking Primate,” Angles Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; “terrane,” Angles Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; “Private Property,” Angles Gallery, Santa Monica, CA.

Recent group exhibitions include “It’s All About Water” (curated by Elizabeth Fiore & Melissa Feldman), The Storefront, Bellport, NY; “Belief in Giants,” Miles McEnery Gallery; “Loose Canon,” L A Louver, Venice, CA; “Inaugural Exhibition,” CRG Gallery, New York, NY; “New Art For A New Century: Contemporary Acquisitions 2000-2010,” Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; “FYI – The Reflected Gaze – Self Portraiture Today,” Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; “ TOOLS, “ Williamson Gallery, ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA; “Like Lifelike: Painting in the Third Dimension,” Sweeney Art Gallery, University of California, Riverside, CA; “New Works: A Group Show of Gallery Artists,” Angles Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; and “SceneSeen: Recent Acquisitions from the Luckman Fine Arts Complex Permanent Collection, 1979-2006,” Cal State Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA.

His work is included in the permanent collections of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art at Rollins College, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Winter Park, FL; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Jumex Collection, Mexico City, Mexico; Luckman Gallery, California State University, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, PA; Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; and The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY.

LaDuke lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

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Tom LaDuke