The landscapes in this new exhibition are views from what is essentially the same location at Riverside Community in the Moutere Valley. Paintings based on field photographs taken at various times of the day, over a long period of time. A single location as a repository of ideas for art-making is something that interests Dell. Revisiting a place to search for and find something unfamiliar or new. Yet, visible change is often only noticeable over time, or from looking back through the inventory of visual data previously gathered.
The gradient abstractions in this exhibition are made in a similar way. Their surfaces are built up over a period of time, while making an attempt to retain information that has been put down earlier on in the work. In a sense, Dell is looking back to go forward. Like the Velvet Underground song borrowed for the title of his exhibition – a tune where something remains, a residue from the previous night or from an earlier time – there is a residual past experience that lingers, left over to become an addition to the present.
Michael Dell, 2022