The Lanterns Along the Wall Posted on October 31, 2009 by Cedar Sigo
When I paid a visit to “The Fountain Of Giant Teardrops,” Neil LeDoux’s solo show at Silverman Gallery last year, I had seen only a very rough reproduction of one of the paintings in a newspaper. Underneath it was a small story regarding the roots of these pieces.
“He recounted seeing a fountain in the thick Louisiana forests, the fountain’s beauty was so astonishing that he immediately wanted to share it with his friends and family but when he took them back to see it it was nowhere to be found.” This piqued my interest, as the story seemed to work simultaneously as a veil and an entrance. When I was finally inside the gallery facing the paintings, I was immediately impressed by their size and their dealing so deftly in dark brown. I liked being given a story for work that was decidedly abstract.
Neil recently had new work hanging in the nave at CCA. When I saw the first piece, I was immediately reminded of the cover to a book by the great Moroccan story teller Mohammed Mrabet titled Harmless Poisons Blameless Sins. Neil’s work is more refined and the canvas still very large compared to any of Mrabet’s work, but their paintings share a quality of having cut a live and unknown organism in half, its tendrils flailing about in a dark pool unleashing some further form of pointed magic. They seem older than time, as if they had waited very long to be discovered.
