Serendipity and control. Those qualities would seem to make for dangerous and unlikely partners.
Perhaps that is why their combined, charged presence makes a group of nine paintings by Santa Fe painter Dirk De Bruycker so striking and immediately compelling.
The pieces remain on view through Nov. 5 at the Rule Gallery, which again reinforces its reputation for displaying the best abstraction of any commercial gallery in the Denver area.
De Bruycker sketches out the basic outlines of his compositions with loose lines of asphalt and then pours on overlapping sections of thinned paint and cobalt drier, an ingredient normally added to paint to speed drying but not used on its own.
To be successful, he has to trust in chance but also exert a certain amount of control. He has to daringly allow serendipity to take its course but not let it run amok.
In short, he has to strike a finely tuned balance, a challenging task De Bruycker successfully manages to accomplish in every one of these beautiful and subtly complex abstractions and in much of the rest of his work.
The Belgian-born artist shows regularly across the United States, with four solo shows last year alone, including one at Lemmons Contemporary in New York City. He was honored earlier this year with a large-scale survey of his work at Caermersklooster, an arts center in Ghent, Belgium.
Because of De Bruycker’s use of poured paint, it is tempting to compare him to color-field painters like Helen Frankenthaler or Morris Louis, but he does not allow the paint to soak into untreated canvas like they did.
His artistic intentions are different. Somewhat in the vein of Jackson Pollock, he relies on a mix of means to apply paint and introduces materials that are not even paint at all, eager for the intriguing effects they create on their own and in combinations.
The myriad, often nuanced effects that De Bruycker achieves in the overlapping sections of the resulting canvases are impressive, ranging from transparent, sometimes milky washes to thick pools of opaque paint and from spirited splotches to graceful drips.
Parts of the canvases often look a little like mud flats, with the artist capitalizing on the cracking, striated and sometimes even peeling effects of the poured paint and other ingredients, as they seep across the canvas, congeal and dry.
An allusion to mud flats makes sense, because De Bruycker acknowledges drawing inspiration from nature, especially the arid landscape of New Mexico. And these paintings all possess an implicit if not explicit organic quality.
The artist also spends a considerable amount of time in Nicaragua and has been influenced in these pieces not only by its jarringly contrasting ecology but also by the dramatic cycles of death and renewal in the country’s natural as well as tumultuous social and political environments.
If all these influences are for the most part not readily apparent, they do seem to be imbedded in the soul of these paintings and they can be felt in De Bruycker’s unlikely yet potent choice of palette. The canvases are dominated by bright ocher, crimson red and profound purple and accented by wispy grays and tans and patches of white.
The only direct reference to nature comes in the underlying asphalt sketches. Each evokes the outline of a butterfly but does so in such a rough, loose way that many viewers will not even make the connection – an oversight that would in no way diminish appreciation of the works.
If there is a definite look and sensibility that ties these works together, De Bruycker manages to achieve considerable diversity within the series. “Ometepe,” a 72-by-60-inch canvas, offers a bold, imposing wall of purple, with wonderfully textured surfaces.
The heaviness of that piece contrasts with the openness and airiness of what might be the strongest painting in the show, an 84-by-72-inch canvas titled “Crimson Tip 1,” with its gentle washes and delicate traces.
De Bruycker has managed to a develop what eludes so many abstractionists – a distinctive, striking, well-honed aesthetic that makes these paintings well worth a look.
Dirk De Bruycker
THROUGH NOV. 5 | Show of recent paintings by the Santa Fe artist | Rule Gallery, 111 Broadway | Free | Noon-6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays (303-777-9473 or rulegallery.com)
