A WAY WITH WORDS: Parts I & II
A WAY WITH WORDS
PART I: Maki Fine Arts (April 6 - May 12, 2024)
PART II: Tsutaya Ginza Atrium (April 26 - May 15, 2024)
Maki Fine Arts presents a solo exhibition of new works by Alex Dodge titled A Way With Words. The exhibition will run from April 6 (Sat.) to May 12 (Sun.). This will be Dodge’s third solo show with the gallery, and the first in about two and a half years (the last being in 2021). This exhibition will consist of two parts: Part I, which will be held at Maki Fine Arts, and Part II, which will be held at the GINZA ATRIUM in Ginza Tsutaya Books.
Over the past 20 years Dodge has continued to redefine the act of painting with innovative techniques and processes. Employing a range of software and computer code, his works traverse the virtual and physical worlds. With a unique approach, inspired by various printmaking techniques, Dodge translates his images to canvas with thick layers of oil paint using stencils cut with lasers and other CNC processes. His work is a fusion of advanced digital tools and painstaking manual work using traditional techniques and media. Reflected in his technical process is his perennial subject of technology itself and how it continues to redefine human experience.
The new works for this exhibition take connectivity of language and AI as their general theme. While deeply contemplative in their anticipation of the near and distant future, the work remains playful with interminable humor and levity.
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At the heart of human experience lies a paradox: our deepest feelings and insights are often ineffable, eluding the grasp of language. Yet, in this digital epoch, language, particularly text, has become indispensable in connecting us.
Language has been a primary human technology allowing for extensible or shareable virtual spaces; be it in the form of a printed book, song lyrics, or compiled computer code and yet language is not without its limitations. The intersection with visual forms such as painting extend human experience in ways that language alone cannot. In these exhibitions Alex Dodge extends the established use of text in his work, employing his signature humor and formal play, exploring various dimensions of language as a propositional, procedural, poetic, graphical, and tactile construct. “A Way With Words” plays with text in a way that both celebrates its expressive capability while equally laying bare its often comical inadequacy.
These exhibitions arrive at a moment when our civilization embarks on a new path with language. The rise of computational power, statistical modeling, and algorithmic processing—exemplified by tools like Chat GPT and others—has revolutionized our interaction with text. There is an irony that the GPU (graphics processing unit), originally intended for visual tasks, now drive neural networks and large language models, in reshaping our language landscape in profound ways. This technological leap stirs a philosophical and linguistic debate, in the Western tradition, with figures like Ludwig Wittgenstein and the linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. Their key premise, the centrality of language in defining and shaping reality, gains new significance as we blend text with AI to generate human experience. In contrast, Eastern philosophies, notably Buddhism and Taoism, regard language as a more limited tool in understanding reality. They advocate transcending language to reach a deeper, direct understanding of reality, as practiced in Buddhist meditation or the Taoist pursuit of intuitive understanding. Fittingly, the exhibition’s second chapter unfolds in Tsutaya bookstore’s Atrium gallery—an inner sanctum of the celebration of language in book form.
Dodge’s paintings are a visual metaphor for this philosophical discourse. Phrases from song lyrics and poetry are transformed into fluffy, pillow-like letters sewn from fabric, taking on almost figurative-like qualities as they inhabit geometrically tiled interiors. These spaces, with their numerical and computationally simulated qualities, represent idealized worlds where language—rendered as languid, floppy, and imperfect pillows—resides. The contrast is striking: the perfection of algorithmically generated spaces against the organic, unconstrained, and imperfect nature of language as portrayed in Dodge’s work.
This exhibition reflects on how new technologies redefine artistic expression. Just as photography’s advent liberated painting to explore new dimensions, the fusion of text and AI challenges and inspires new artistic vistas. Dodge’s work, spanning two decades, has been a testament to this exploration, examining the intersection of virtual systems and painting.
“A Way With Words” is an invitation to reflect on the nuanced dance between language, technology, and visual forms. Through a blend of humor, play, and thoughtful inquiry, Dodge encourages viewers to engage with these themes, offering a mirror to our complex, ever-changing relationship with language and the reality it seeks to describe.
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Part I :
Alex Dodge “A Way With Words”
April 6 – May 12, 2024
Maki Fine Arts / B1F, 77-5 Tenjin-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
Wednesday – Saturday 12:00-19:00 / Sunday 12:00 -17:00
Closed on Monday, Tuesday
Part II :
Alex Dodge “A Way With Words”
April 26 – May 15, 2024
GINZA TSUTAYA BOOKS ATRIUM / 6-10-1 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
11:00 – 20:00
Daemon-Haunted World | Klaus von Nichtssagend, NY
Alex Dodge
Daemon-Haunted World
September 8 - October 21, 2023
Opening Reception : September 8, 2023 6-8 pm
Klaus Gallery is excited to open its fall season with a solo show of new paintings by Alex Dodge, opening September 8. Dodge will debut a group of oil paintings building upon his interest in recent computing advances, and the ways in which technologies evolve and shape life in the anthropocene.
The show includes a suite of paintings depicting patchwork-skinned humanoids lounging in various states of contemplation, including several portraying figures on the beach. The paintings look to historical antecedents like Manet’s Olympia or Cezanne and Picasso’s bathers, picturing a leisure setting infused with a subtext of class. A number of works display impish “daemons” casting magical spells, offering a unique take on the concept of artificial intelligence presented in the guise of 1980s cartoons. A tondo of gleeful, star-embellished pillowy lettering that reads “Circling the Drain, Racing to the Bottom” hovers and looms in the show. Other text-based works take the form of graphic t-shirts, featuring phrases like “Blood in the Water” and “Tabula Rasa.” These paintings engage with the notion of personhood and projections of selfhood in various forms. As a group, Dodge’s paintings explore how technologies mine, mimic, and threaten the idea of our own humanity, examining the potentials and failings of our own inventions.
Alex Dodge lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and Takao, Japan. He holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a MPS from New York University. In addition to multiple solo exhibitions at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery since 2006, recent solo exhibitions include BB&M Gallery in Seoul, South Korea (2023); Maki Fine Arts in Tokyo, Japan (2021); The Faro Collection in Tokyo, Japan (2021); and Halsey McKay Gallery in East Hampton, NY (2021). He has had work in group shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus, Ohio; the Fleming Museum of Art in Burlington, Vermont; The Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas; The Bucksbaum Center for the Arts at Grinnell College in Iowa; Miles McEnery Gallery in New York; Mitsukoshi Contemporary, Tokyo, Japan; Woaw Gallery in Hong Kong; the IPCNY in New York; and James Cohan Gallery, New York. His work is held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; the MFA Boston; the Pizzuti Collection at the Columbus Museum of Art; The New York Public Library; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Jundt Art Museum, WA; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University, CA; Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS.
짠!정의로운악동 | Art In Culture, Seoul
By Haeri Kim (Art In Culture) 4/17/2023
뉴욕과 도쿄를 오가며 활동하는 아메리칸 페인터 알렉스 도지(Alex Dodge). 작가는 3D 디자인 프로그램과 일본 전통판화 기법을 접목해 통통 튀는 캐릭터와 의미심장한 문구를 그린다. 발랄한 화면에는 위기의 시대를 향한 경고 메시지가 숨어있다. 아날로그와 디지털, 현실과 가상, 이미지와 텍스트 사이 ‘밸런스 게임’을 벌이는 작가. 그가 국내 첫 개인전 <퍼스널 데이>(4. 1~5. 20 BB&M갤러리)를 연다. 개막에 앞서 전시 소감과 그의 예술관을 들었다. / 김해리 기자
— 작년에 이어 올해도 한국을 찾았다. 2022년에는 BB&M갤러리의 기획전 <드림 라이프>를 계기로 서울을 방문했다.
Dodge 인천공항에서 시내 중심부까지 펼쳐지는 풍경은 아시아의 여타 도시와 크게 다르지 않아 친숙했지만, 서울 곳곳을 탐방하며 독특한 미감을 발견했다. 디자인과 건축에서 느껴지는 산뜻함과 경쾌함. 아시아 아트씬의 진정한 허브로 도약하기 위해 수많은 갤러리와 미술기관이 헌신하고 있다는 느낌이었다.... read the full article here.
Personal Day | BB&M, Seoul
PERSONAL DAYApril 1 thru May 20, 2023BB&M, SeoulBB&M is pleased to present its first solo exhibition of Alex Dodge, whose vibrant, tactile paintings depict uncanny figures and scenes that hover between the digital and the analog, the real and the imaginary. Conceived with advanced digital tools but realized through a manual process indebted to traditional techniques acquired during his extended residence in Japan, Dodge’s work poses questions about the formation of the self and the shifting experience of material culture in our technology-permeated, late-capitalist age.
Josef Albers - Formulation: Articulation | Fleming Museum of Art, The University of Vermont
Alex Dodge (American, b. 1977), Everything Appears as it is, Infinite, 2011.Six color UV screen print with braille texture on museum board, edition: 17/30. Museum purchase 2012.2
Work included in the exhibition "Josef Albers - Formulation: Articulation" at the Fleming Museum of Art at The university of Vermont.February 7 - May 20, 2023The exhibition Formulation: Articulation is a chance to look at every color differently—through the lens of an artist’s teaching exercises that show how our perceptions of colors are affected by the environments in which they are viewed. In color studies like Homage to the Square, artist and educator Josef Albers (1888-1976) demonstrates how immediate proximity changes our viewing of shades and values of color... More here
Sound & Vision Podcast
Featured on Episode 321 of the Sound & Vision Podcast.Alex Dodge talks with artist Brian Alfred about his early days in Denver's noise music scene, his process, recurrent themes in his work, and more.Listen here, or wherever podcasts are served.
Vance Crowe Podcast II
Featured in Episode #261 of the Vance Crowe Podcast March 28, 2022Artist Alex Dodge Returns! Virtual Reality Museum Tour; Gakiya, Hammons, Talmadge, Redlin, and moreAlex Dodge is an international artist who's work ranges from painting to prints and he plans much of his work in Virtual Reality. Alex joined Vance Crowe in Virtual Reality to do a tour of some works of art that are particularly important to them.Watch hereListen here or subscribe and listen on your favorite podcast app
Vance Crowe Podcast
Alex Dodge; American artist living in Japan
Featured in Episode 166 of the Vance Crowe Podcast December 7, 2021Alex Dodge is an internationally acclaimed artist with studios in both New York City and Tokyo. His art is a unique blend of mediums, is designed in virtual space and then hand crafted. He speaks with Vance Crowe about textures, colors, shadows, and the medium of art itself. Dodge recently had a daughter and the two discuss whether someone is born an artist or if they become one from their environment.Watch hereListen here or subscribe and listen on your favorite podcast app
Laundry Day: It All Comes Out In the Wash | Maki Fine Arts
Alex Dodge "LAUNDRY DAY : IT ALL COMES OUT IN THE WASH" 25 September - 07 November 2021
Maki Fine Arts is pleased to present LAUNDRY DAY : IT ALL COMES OUT IN THE WASH, a solo show by Alex Dodge, starting Saturday, September 25th through Sunday, November 7th, 2021. In his much anticipated second show in Japan, two-and-a-half years since his first show, Alex Dodge will showcase new paintings that combine images of subject matter from his previous works--such as printed material including The New York Times--with images of textile, patterns, clothing, and fabric.
Between the Second and Third Dimension
Hitoshi Dehara (Curator, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art)
In his previous show at Maki Fine Arts, The Trauma of Information, the majority of Alex Dodge's motifs were fabrics and newspapers that have been crumpled up or used for packaging--exactly the type of shapes that stimulate visual illusions. The contrast between the original shape and the warped shape helps our brain discharge the idea of three-dimensionality. The motifs are drawn alone on canvas without a background and emanate a certain amount of thickness. The oil paint is applied thickly using overlapping brush strokes and topped with stenciled text and patterns, which help flesh out the three-dimensional illusion even further. At close inspection, however, we see that some paint mounds don't align with the illusionary irregularity of the newspaper's surface and others bring attention to the flatness of the canvas used as foundation. They are neither uniform nor reduced to the augmentations created by the illusion. Therefore, our eyes end up wandering between the two perceptions: the three-dimensional (the thickness) and the two-dimensional (the three-dimensional illusion). Within this small little world, the universal riddle of visual arts--the difference between two perceptions--unfolds. These works should be seen as paintings that are fortified through precise planning and pliable positioning.The artist uses computer-generated images through 3D simulations. His laser-cut stencils were influenced by Japanese stencil-dying techniques. Cutting-edge technology vs. traditional craft; west vs. east; art vs design; and painting vs. wood-block printing. In the hands of Alex Dodge, these seemingly opposite and contrasting (or strategically displayed) terms are effortlessly built into his creations according to his intent. For example, until the technique of Japanese stencil-dying is brought up, the viewer has no inkling of its influence in his works. Through high-tech support and intellectual planning, his works generate the visual surprise we experience.In his recent works, Dodge has chosen motifs of day-to-day consumer items. The subtle existence of these items passing through our eyes surely help us find modernity and meaning, but it also echoes poetry. Poets compose a world of text independent from reality. Likewise, Alex Dodge accomplishes something similar through his paint brush.
Maki Fine Arts5-1-1F, Nishigokencho, Shinjuku-Ku, Tokyo 162-0812Tel: +81-(0)3-5579-2086Wednesday - Saturday 12:00-19:00 / Sunday 12:00 -17:00Closed on Monday, Tuesdaymakifinearts.com
Laundry Day - INTERVIEW | Maki Fine Arts
アレックス・ダッジ インタビュー / Maki Fine Arts from Maki Fine Arts on Vimeo.Alex Dodge, interviewed in his Tokyo studio on August 11, 2021, talks about his upcoming show at Maki Fine Arts in Tokyo as well as his process and experience working in Japan.Interviewed by Takahiro MakiVideo Production by Kenta Hoshino
Alex Dodge - Holding Pattern | Hi-Fructose
Featured in Vol. 60 of Hi-FructoseAlex Dodge - Holding Patternby Clayton SchusterPrint copy available here.
Remote Working | Faro Collection
Remote Working III, 2021, Gouache on paper, cut and pasted, 50.8 x 76.2 cm A recent body of works on paper titled "Remote Working" will be on view at The Faro Collection.Alex Dodge "Remote Working"Date : August 14 - September 5, 2021 / Friday - Sunday 13:00 - 19:00 or by appointmentVenue : FARO Kagurazaka
From Morning Til Night, We Should Never Rely on a Single Thing | Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles
From Morning Til Night, We Should Never Rely on a Single Thing
Curated by Tomory Dodge 14 - 28 April 2021
Philip Martin Gallery is proud to present, “From Morning Til Night, We Should Never Rely on a Single Thing," a group exhibition curated by Los Angeles-based painter, Tomory Dodge. The title of the exhibition, a quotation attributed to 9th century Zen teacher Huang Po, advocates an approach to the everyday that does not rely on preconceived notions and concepts for understanding, but rather seeks to meet each occurrence on its own terms — to simply follow circumstances."Whether working from observation or imagination, whether their work is based in representation or abstraction, the painters included in this exhibition approach painting as grounds for constant reinvention and new ways of perception. While some of these artists utilize practices that may appear more rigidly formal than others, and while certain weight is placed on subject matter in some cases, the main object of their pursuit is none other than the direct experience of the act of painting itself for both themselves as the artist as well as for the viewer." - Tomory DodgeFeaturing works by Alex Dodge, Jackie Gendel, Rema Ghuloum, Sky Glabush, Iva Gueorguieva, Josh Hagler, Mitchell Johnson, Alexander Kroll, James Morse, Laurie Nye, Maja Ruznic, Lisa Sanditz, Sophie Treppendahl and Laura Vahlberg."From Morning Til Night, We Should Never Rely on a Single Thing," is on-line April 14 - April 28, 2021. Sedrick Huckaby’s exhibition of new sculptures and paintings, “Estuary,” is on view at the gallery March 26 – May 7, 2021.In accordance with Los Angeles County Covid-19 protocol, Philip Martin Gallery is currently open by appointment only. To make an appointment, or to get additional images, or information please email info@philipmartingallery.com, or call 213-422-9286. Philip Martin Gallery is located at 2712 S. La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90034 in the Culver City area of Los Angeles between Venice Blvd. and Washington Blvd., just south of the 10 Freeway.
More info here
Kono Taro at CADAN | Fuji Television Alpha News
Kono Taro, Minister of Administrative Reform visits CADAN Yurakucho during Maki Fine Arts group show with work by Alex Dodge, Fuminao Suenaga, and Nao Osada.Watch the video here.
Alex Dodge, Fuminao Suenaga, Nao Osada | CADAN Yurakucho
Alex Dodge, Fuminao Suenaga, Nao Osada
A special group show by Maki Fine Arts at CADAN Yurakucho.Contemporary Art Dealers Association Nippon (CADAN) maintains this space for member galleries and special events.2021 年 3 月 24 日(水) ‒4 月 11 日(日)企画: Maki Fine Arts営業時間：火−金 11時−19時 / 土、日、祝 −17時定休日：月（祝日の場合は翌平日）ACCESS［展覧会について］ステンシルを用いて立体感のある画面を作り出す、アレックス・ダッジ。日用品の要素を単純化した立体 作品を制作する、末永史尚。シルクスクリーンにより実際と異なる素材に印刷する、長田奈緒。それぞれ が卓越したテクニックによる細部への丁寧な作り込みで、知覚的な驚きをもたらす 3 名の作品は日常で目 にする、身近でささやかな題材が選ばれています。例えば、アレックス・ダッジの帽子やスニーカー、末永史尚のふせん、段ボール箱、長田奈緒の amazon の包装などがあります。CADAN 有楽町のスペースの 随所に散りばめられた作品は、わたしたちの身近にある題材を扱いながら、軽やかなユーモアを付け加え ることで、鑑賞者のものの見方の検証を促すものです。 コロナ禍において、リアルに作品と対峙する機会が減少する中で、オンラインの鑑賞では体験できないよ うな、丹念な手仕事で生み出された作品の熱量や、研ぎ澄まされた表層のテクスチャーを読み取ることが できます。ぜひご高覧下さい。Additional Info here
Alex Dodge - Distorting Reality | METAL Magazine
ALEX DODGE DISTORTING REALITY by Lara Bongard
Artist Alex Dodge lives and works between New York City and Tokyo. Like his fluctuating surroundings, Dodge tries to find a balance between seemingly opposing forces in his paintings: the analogue and digital, the chaotic and structured, the real and imagined – to eventually find a state of synthesis, where these forces merge together into richly colourful and tactile anthropomorphic scenes that obscure, distort, and make us question our sense of reality. In their silent, poetic presence, his subjects are as imaginative as mysterious and unfathomable. We talk to the artist about his fascination with the tension between the visible and invisible, his use of ancient Japanese printing traditions, challenging energy and defining authenticity, and how a painting suddenly becomes a prophecy of our current times.Read the Full Interview here.
‘Oil on Canvas’ Meets the Future: The Paintings of Alex Dodge | Design Milk
09.22.20 Posted by David Behringer
Alex Dodge is pushing the future of painting. His signature raised patterns of oil paint are digitally sketched using 3D design software before landing on traditional canvas using laser-cut stencils and airbrushed backgrounds...Read the full article here
Goings On About Town | The New Yorker
September 18, 2020Alex Dodge The characters in this Brooklyn painter’s new works, at Klaus von Nichtssagend, seem to float in a desolate virtual space. Their blue-to-white gradient backgrounds are actually inspired by a technique that predates digital design: Dodge studied traditional woodblock printing in Japan and borrows the bokashi cross-fade technique to create his illusions of otherworldly pictorial depth. The seamless, textureless expanses contrast with the artist’s hallmark raised patterns of stencilled oil paint (imagine laser-cut fondant), lending his works a strange heft. Dodge’s subjects—catlike animals in bespoke onesies, a figure in a Muppet-esque costume, another tiptoeing beneath a patchwork quilt—seem to have stepped out of cartoon narratives. But their comic qualities are almost overwhelmed by their implicit menace, underscored by the uncanny gravitas of the featureless realms they inhabit.— Johanna FatemanRead original article here
Alex Dodge 2020 | Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, NY
September 11 through October 18, 202054 Ludlow StreetNew York, NY 10002More info here.
Peel from Nature－自然からの剥離 | Mitsukoshi Contemporary, Tokyo
Peel from Nature－自然からの剥離熊谷守一、浮田要三、アレックス・ダッジ、ラッセル・タイラーMorikazu Kumagai, Yozo Ukita, Alex Dodge, Russell TylerGroup show opening at Mitsukoshi Contemporary at Mitsukoshi Nihombashi Main Store, Tokyo.July 15 through July 27th.More Details here.