Sunday, Feb. 4, 1990 The Philadelphia Inquirer
(c)Philadelphia Inquirer 1990
THE ARTS
Dennis Gould's World
Beyond Reason
By Victoria Donohoe, Inquirer Art Critic
Surrealism is not a depleted style for Dennis Gould, an Oregon painter
whose first solo exhibition on the East Coast is at Ursinus College's
Berman Museum. To the contrary, Gould uses a keen imagination to
augment surrealism with geometric abstraction -- a surprising combina-
tion when they appear in the same work.
Gould admits to being a surrealist to this extent: "I share their concerns with the unconcscious, the dream state, explorations of the imagination and appreciation of the craft of image-making," he says.
But Gould only goes so far with this style that in the 1930s was hot
news with its limp watches, science fiction images and the faint melan-
choly underlying everything. He parts company with surrealism as he
guides his works to completion using an insistently graphic style with
lines that course along in obsessive rhythms among organic shapes.
Combining line and tone -- often beautiful high-key colors -- Gould
achieves nearly abstract compositions. Although a human figure or
individual objects can be identified here or there, any of these shapes
that emerge are implied, not stated.
The overall effect is traditional rather than innovational, and there-
in lies the attraction of this particular show. These gently freakish yet
satisfying pictures explore the world of magic through contrived
personal symbols. It's a world beyond reason and, strangely enough,
beyond strong emotion.
Since the novelty value of this sort of artistry has long since evaporated,
young artists are likely to be more intriqued by his craftsmanship and
wide technical range than by the imaginary and surreal aspects of his
work.
Gould seems to be amenable to transforming his style as he discov-
ers -- or rediscovers -- technique. That's not surprising, since he was
an engineer first and an artist second. He was a pre-engineering major
in a polytechnic high school in Portand studying mechanical drawing
for four years, before studying art at college and graduate school.
While the director of Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition
Services (SITES), he earned a reputation as the nation's foremost
authority on traveling exhibits and traveled to most of the museums
of theworld as part of his job, savoring the art he saw in each place.
Later he directed the Los Angeles-based Armand Hammer Foundation,
where Berman Museum director Lisa Tremper Barnes formerly worked.
Today, he is a full-tine artist working from a studio on a farm
in Oregon's Emerald Valley. The excursions the artist Dennis Gould makes
in the current show are strange, even a bit scary. But the man who took
them obviously enjoyed them.
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