Dumb Country: Four paintings and one sculpture by Jim Lutes    Nov 16, 2011 - Feb 4, 2012

The first large scale body of work by Jim Lutes in over a decade, Dumb Country is the culmination of a long meditation on the natural world: what our place is (or is not) in nature and what it means to represent it in our time. The four paintings offer the view to the north, south, east and west from a spot in Kelly Creek, Idaho—quite literally the paintings installed on each of four walls locate the viewer as if standing in the rushing river itself. In the center of this immersive viewing experience is a seven-foot long boulder of solid trash encased in clear urethane, created to the scale of the rocks in Kelly Creek.

The landscapes crawl with Lutes’s signature calligraphic gestures, which sometimes dissolve entirely into a swirl of marks and in other passages animate in equal measure rock and water, creating a perspective entirely new to this age-old painting subject. The object brings form to and houses the chaotic hiss of marks so familiar in Lutes’s paintings. His rhythmic and labyrinthine matrix of floating strokes is expressed in the physical world as a conglomeration of trash in an object that is both wildly radical and singular in its making.

Valerie Carberry Gallery is open to the public 10-5, Monday through Friday, and 11-5 on Saturday. For additional information regarding the gallery, upcoming exhibitions, or reproductions, please contact Susan Beagley, 312-397-9990.