Doug Argue is a great virtuoso, making paintings that cover the range of styles, from witty representational works to exquisite abstractions. He has absorbed all of art history, using its resources critically, to fresh aesthetic and expressive effect. His art is a stunning achievement, all the more so because its contradictions bespeak those of our society.
Donald Kuspit, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Art History and Philosophy, State University of New York at Stony Brook.
In honor of the release of his new monograph published by Skira, Doug Argue: Letters to the Future, Waterhouse & Dodd is pleased to present a curated selection of recent works in this online exclusive exhibition.
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Argue’s 30-year painting career has culminated in a striking body of abstract work that encompasses a diversity of mediums and formats. His compositional approach extends to both spatial construction and figural depiction in an oeuvre that lyrically conjures metaphors and art-historical references to the past and present. His canvases are filled with fluid orchestrations of biomorphic forms and geometric shapes, amidst spontaneous gestural swaths of color. His forms sweep over different pictorial depths and surfaces suggesting movement, instability, and the passage of time. Integral to Argue’s vocabulary of shapes are computer-generated stencils of scattered letters which dissipate across these illusionistic fields to form their own lexical cosmos.
Argue’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including at the Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, and in New York, Edelman Arts and Haunch of Venison. His work is held in the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Walker Art Center, Weisman Art Museum, and numerous corporate and private collections. Argue has been the recipient of multiple awards and accolades including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant (1995) and the Rome Prize (1997), and a commission of two paintings for the lobby of One World Trade Center in Manhattan. His latest monograph Letters to the Future, is published by Skira in partnership with Weisman Art Museum in conjunction with a forthcoming exhibition of Argue’s work at the museum.