DENNY EKSTROM b. Monterey Park, California EDUCATION North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND SELECTED RECENT EXHIBITIONS 2011 2010 2009 2008 2008 2006 2004 2001 2000
Scape Gallery, Corona Del Mar, CA San Francisco Fine Art Fair, Walter Bischoff Gallery, Berlin, Germany Santa Fe Art Fair, Walter Bischoff Gallery, Berlin Museum Show, Museum Villa Haiss, Zell, Germany New Mythology, Pharmaka, Long Beach, CA Museum Show (Solo Exhibition), Museum Villa Haiss, Zell Los Angeles Art Show, Santa Monica, CA Art Karlsrunhe, Rheinstetten, Germany Pharmaka, Los Angeles, California Chicago Art Fair, Walter Bischoff Gallery, Berlin Peter Blake Gallery (Solo Exhibition), Laguna Beach, CA Vertical (Solo Exhibition), Laguna Beach Irvine Valley College (Solo Exhibition), Irvine, CA
STATEMENT Denny Ekstrom’s family-owned Cardinal Industrial Finishes in El Monte is where he gets his custom acrylics used in his paintings. Having a technical understanding of the components of paint has been instrumental in Denny’s success in his work, creating paintings that are as much wallsculpture as they are color-field paintings. “When I left the compnay and took up painting full time, my background gave me a real edge. I know the chemistry of paint, how it moves, reacts,” he explains. This knowledge has allowed Ekstrom to imbue each of his paintings with a certain character not typical in non-objective color-field paintings - The works have a soul, a temperament, readable in the attitude of the cracks, buckles, and pinches. They breathe like cracked earth. The surfaces are at once ancient and undeniably contemporary. “I saw a black and white Robert Motherwell painting in a magazine,” Ekstrom says, “...I attempted to duplicate the seemingly simple design but when I finished, it was jut a black oval on a white canvas with no emotion radiating from it. It’s what I’m still working on 20 years later, to create a monorealisitc image that generates feeling.”