DAVID SANDLIN “SLEEP O’HISTORY”
Bongout Galerie
Torstrasse 110
10119 Berlin
Opening Friday 28. May at 7 pm
Exhibition 28.5 – 10.7
Bongoût Gallery is proud to present New York artist David Sandlin in his first exhibition in Berlin. He will be showing his books; new paintings; “puritanical novelty items”; and a collection of drawings from his 2006 book, An Alphabetical Ballad of Carnality. This will be the first major showing of Sandlin’s artist’s-book opus A Sinner’s Progress, an eight-volume series comprised mostly of large-scale hand-printed books, including his most recent work, Slumburbia, a nine-metre silkscreened panorama of sloth and indolence in sumptuous hand-separated color silkscreen.
David Sandlin floats between the worlds of painting, printmaking, comics, and artist’s books. Since he began his career in the 1980s, visual narrative, usually nonlinear, has been a core component of his work. He uses it as a structural device to build content and express ideas while still being able to experiment with form, using symbolism and allegory to amplify his social commentary. Sandlin’s books range in form from complex hand-bound silkscreened editions to offset pulp-style comics—each volume’s form in service to its content to some extent. “The book rather than the single image is the ideal medium for me to explore content and experiment with form,” says Sandlin.
Eccentric modernist painters like Beckmann, Ensor, and Guston have inspired Sandlin’s explorations into the mythic/transformative utility of personal history. His love of words and literature also draw him toward narrative: “I was born in Northern Ireland and moved to the USA, to Alabama, when I was a teenager—both places steeped in the narrative-literary tradition—so I’m not surprised that I need to incorporate words into my images. I love the wordplay used by Irish and southern American artists like James Joyce, Flann O’Brien, Flannery O’Connor, and Hank Williams.”
Other works in the exhibition reflect Sandlin’s love of narrative. “The Sleep of History,” a large work on canvas, is part of his ongoing series of epic paintings. Drawings upon which his abecedarium, An Alphabetical Ballad of Carnality, are also on display as a 22-metre-long panorama. He will also be showing components of “The Pur-Ton-o-Fun Co. Reading Room,” a multimedia installation piece based on A Sinner’s Progress.
David Sandlin’s work has been displayed in galleries and museums worldwide, and his comics have been published by Fantagraphics and Cornelius Editions and have also appeared in many anthologies, including Raw, Strapazin, The Ganzfeld, and The Best American Comics 2009. He is currently preparing to start his next book, a graphic novel, as a Fellow of the Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars, at the New York Public Library, in NYC.
DAVID SANDLIN “SLEEP O’HISTORY”
Bongout Galerie
Torstrasse 110
10119 Berlin
Opening Friday 28. May at 7 pm
Exhibition 28.5 – 10.7