Dave McDermott

Dave McDermott’s work surveys the tropes we have inherited throughout our collective history, and translates them into an expansive language of his own making. There are echoes of both Classicism and Dada in McDermott’s work, an assertion that there is ultimately no hierarchical difference between the sublime and the absurd. His paintings are steeped in historical (and art-historical) references, personal histories, literary, cinematic, and cultural references (both high and low), but they eschew didactic or moral positions. Instead McDermott recasts his subjects as stand-ins for ourselves, through which we may gaze into the reflection of our individual and shared consciousness. The interaction of incongruous materials on the canvas is paramount to his work. Fragmented perspectives—obscured by fluctuating vantage points, and jigsaw-like arrangements— shift and roil on the canvas. Intricate yarn patterns, gold leaf, plaster, and expressive brushwork create differentiation between themes, and this commingling of materials imparts the unbound characters and forms with a sense of individual elegance.