FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ALEXANDER KALETSKI: CARDBOARD CASTLE

May 10 – June 5, 2007

Dillon Gallery is very pleased to present Cardboard Castle. In this new exhibit, Alexander Kaletski continues his remarkable if endless parade of eye-catching characters that inhabit our world. These paint and collage portraits display the spectacular, often riveting characters one can’t help but notice in the everyday.

Beginning with commercial cardboard packaging to which collage has been added, through both line and color, the resulting artworks reveal, inform, provoke, but most often, they amuse.

After defecting from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, Kaletski became enthralled with the high quality and abundance of disposable packing materials in the USA. For the artist, these materials provided unique, if unusual, components for the creative process. A perceptive eye for the striking individual in the crowd, coupled with a mature, confident artistry, result in penetrating observations of the extraordinary individuals that populate our culture. In addition to the provocative images produced, the viewer is confronted with the amplification of the logo or design remnant of the original product contained, as well as the cardboard itself, scarred, pitted and torn, now artfully reborn.

Alexander Kaletski has exhibited his “Cardboard” works at the Aldrich Museum, the Nassau County Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Minsk as well as numerous galleries both here and abroad.
  

ALEXANDER KALETSKI

“I want to use the least to express the most,” states Alexander Kaletski. Whether in his economical painted line employed against scrumbled canvas surfaces or in the use of found materials in his renowned cardboards, Kaletski works with a fluent freedom that belies the rich layers of meaning in his art. After defecting from the Soviet Union in the early 1970s, Kaletski became enthralled with the high quality and abundance of disposable packing materials in the USA. For the light-pocketed young artist, these rich and varied materials provided stimulating components for the creative process. With a perceptive eye for the striking individual in the crowd, coupled with the confidence that engenders spontaneity, Kaletski’s art revels in flashbulb observations of the extraordinary incidents and individuals that enliven and populate our culture.

His paint and cardboard collage portraits display the spectacular, often riveting characters found in the urban environment of New York City. His use of logo-printed cardboard packaging materials guides his exploration into the themes of contemporary society. Beginning with simple commercial cardboard, Kaletski adds collage and paint, resulting in pieces that provoke, inform, and more often than not, amuse. In addition to the provocative images he produces, the viewer is confronted with the amplification of the logo or design remnant of the original product contained, as well as the cardboard itself, scarred, pitted and torn, now artfully reborn.

Kaletski is also a master of oil painting. He finds figuration and abstraction to be inseparable, and his canvases best demonstrate this. They have been described as a controlled structure of dripped paint that creates free-form geometric shapes, by using uneven and highly energized brush strokes. Kaletski utilizes abstraction to play upon ambiguous images, contradictions and surprises, allowing the viewer to follow his symbols and figures and decide for themselves what meaning coalesces from the whole.
 

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 

• 2011  Dillon Gallery, Contemplation, New York
• 2011  Raffeisen Bank, Cardboard People around the World, Vienna
• 2010  Dillon Gallery, Carton of Eden, New York City
• 2010  Kato Gallery Tokyo, From New York to Tokyo, Japan
• 2008  Dillon Gallery, Wet Dreams, New York City
  SCOPE Art Fair London, UK
   Lasandr-art Gallery Minsk, Belarus
• 2007  Dillon Gallery, Cardboard Castle, New York City
• 2005  Spike Gallery, White Rain, New York City
• 2003  Dillon Gallery, Headlines, New York City
   Gomez Gallery, American Breakfast, Baltimore, MD
• 2002  Nassau County Museum of Art, Cardboard Museum, New York
  Dillon Gallery, Out of the Box, New York City
• 2001  The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Cardboard Box, Connecticut
• 2000  Dillon Gallery,Women Only, New York City
• 1999  Dillon Gallery, Wallpaper Heroes, New York City
• 1998  Dillon Gallery, Nude Colony, New York City
• 1997  Dillon Gallery, Cardboard People, New York City
• 1995  Dillon Gallery, Wallpaper Heroes, New York City

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

• Caldic Collection, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
• Contemporary Museum of Miniature Art; Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
• Linklaters and Paines; Corporate Collection; New York, NY.
• Szymanska Foundation, New York, NY.
• Dr. N.H. Burki, Bar & Karrer; Zurich, Switzerland
• P.J. Lewis Fine Art; Greenwich, CT.
• Nicholas F. Taubman Foundation; Roanoke, VA.