Jun 10

Carin Kulb Dangot

Carin Kulb Dangot is a contemporary abstract painter, sculptor, and installation artist who has exhibited consistently in New YorK City and Brazil as well as at galleries in London, Amherst - Massachusetts, and Miami. Her most recent solo exhibitions include ChaShaMA Gallery and Narthex Gallery in New York. She has exhibited twice at the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture (MUBE) in São Paulo. Notable publications include features in Hyperallergic magazine, Artnet News, Gothamist magazine, and The Art Students League Magazine.

For the purposes of the article we will be focusing specifically on Carin’s paintings. Although consistently and heavily muted in tone and color, these acrylic paintings are bold and perhaps even sometimes aggressive in form and composition. Often containing elastic shapes and asymmetry, these circular, rectangular, and angular shapes are usually disjoined from one another like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. With a subdued poetic finish, the paintings are rich in texture and scratchy brushwork. Although Carin has many series of works, the two series which stand out the most are the Beyond Villa and Meditative series which causes her other works to dwarf in comparison. These particular series have a sense of monumental presentation and execution, not necessarily in size, even though many of the paintings are quite large, but in theatrical presentations of subdued forms grasping across the edges of the canvas. The compositions, texture, and brush strokes are executed so well in a manner which causes a distinction in a gravitational-pulled fashion. Although containing complex compositions the paintings are quite flat in a way of which forms are clearly defined and composed in an orderly fashion with elements of design principles.

Symphony 4 (pictured above) from the Beyond Villa series remains one of Carin’s most unusual paintings in terms of the vast amounts of negative space left on the canvas. The empty composition contains a rich cerulean blue with scratched out brushstrokes as if removing paint with the brush. Within the composition contains a sideways Z flow with shapes of various colors ranging from pink, Venetian red, viridian green, and turquoise. The ‘Z’ composition ranges from areas which are angular to areas of organic spheric form towards the center. The painting shows how Carin has a gift for knowing when to stop painting, her timing prevents an overworked or underworked piece which remains timeless in composed form. A rich yet subdued painting restrained in execution.

Meditation 23.5 (pictured above) from the Meditative series contains even more control than the Beyond Villa series with heavy mixtures of white and gray admixtures to the pigment. The painting remains typical of the series with strong, scratchy brushwork and variations of circular form. Some of the circles contain more circles within while others are divided into graph-like presentations. The circles form in a sideways U shape with negative space containing rain-like textures. A vastly deep work which can evoke feelings of poetic meditation and contemplation.

Carin Kulb Dangot remains a gifted painter with a variety of approaches which offer a consistent vision in presenting painting as a quiet yet dynamic structure. These complex compositions offer insight into new ways of expressing contemporary abstraction steered away from both overworked and underworked qualities. The ‘finish’ aspect, the timing of knowing when to keep going and when to stop remains Carin’s instinctual feature as an artist. There remains a precision to the works as if formulated perfectly in the mind before execution, although the paintings may appear in such a way, the reality probably contains a behind the scenes quiet struggle hidden away from the process. All art in a sense contains an inner or procedural conflict, however some artists usually try to create the illusion as if they simply breathed the work onto the surface. Carin Kulb Dangot's works have a well-mannered execution which remains complex yet therapeutic in appearance.