FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ALEXANDER KALETSKI: WET DREAMS

November 6 – December 6, 2008
Opening Reception November 6th, 6 – 8 PM

Dillon Gallery proudly presents Wet Dreams, a body of work that is a synthesis of Alexander Kaletski’s entire artistic development. Kaletski left the USSR in 1975, carrying with him watercolors he had painted as an underground artist in Moscow. During that time in the Soviet Union, the works of unsanctioned or “non conformist” painters were forbidden and exhibiting as an outsider was considered a serious crime. Forgoing other necessary belongings, the artist had to pay for the release of his own pieces. These watercolors were immediately exhibited in many Universities around the United States, constituting some of the earliest non-conformist art to be viewed in America. His works surprised audiences as they showed unexpectedly that behind the iron curtain existed not only gloom and sadness, but also humor, beauty and hope.

Thirty years and many exhibitions later, Kaletski has produced his new art series, Wet Dreams, which has its genesis in those naïve Moscow studies. The current paintings have the old patina of Russia combined with the heroic loneliness of an outsider artist. Ranging from mundane to profound, characters, and narratives taken from his early figurative work brilliantly coalesce with innovations the artist has developed in America. They portray subtle humor, upholstered patterns, theatrical personalities, character studies, and sexuality. Eternal hope, love and anguish all breathe together to form a complex picture of our lives.

These highly charged dramatic compositions show the cumulative experience of the artist’s experimentation with line, form and color. The layering and transparency of the canvases produce a milky wetness that envelopes the subjects in a mysterious eroticism. The veiled quality covering the jewel tones of the under-paintings expose the artist’s vivid and passionate nature, quietly hidden from the outer world.

Alexander Kaletski was the inaugural exhibition for Dillon Gallery when it opened in Soho in 1994. In the last decade the gallery has presented 7 solo exhibitions of the artist’s works, the most acclaimed being his Cardboard People exhibition which opened in 1996. In his latest endeavor, Wet Dreams, magicians and angels, pain and pleasure, hope and helplessness are presented together as Kaletski’s most poignant artistic achievement. 

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.