Eye On Art: Dominick Di Meo

 I first came to know about Dominick Di Meo in 2019, when I visited the Minneapolis Institute of Art's showing of work by artists associated with the Hairy Who collective from Chicago. You can see pictures from that visit here. I don't believe that Di Meo was part of the Hairy Whos, at least not formally, but rather was living in Chicago around the same time, making him more of an accomplice-in-art than a group participant. 

Whatever the case may be, when I first saw his piece Untitled (Red line with heads) (above) it smacked me square in the attention zone and held it for quite a while. The juxtaposition of the mask-like, almost skeletal faces floating around the amorphous background, and the red hot laser beam of color shooting across the otherwise gloomy canvas seemed so intriguing in the presence of all of the pop colors and very precisely dictated forms of all of the other pieces on display. 

Even if Di Meo's aim isn't to necessarily produce something aesthetically ghoulish or sinister, there's definitely a haunting, otherworldly vibe to it. Maybe it has something to do with all of those ghostly  not-quite-skulls silently moaning in three dimensions from his canvases and sculptural pieces. Of course if you do even a cursory web search on the artist, you'll be told first and foremost, repeatedly, as if it's the only thing anyone has to say about the guy, that he spent a fair amount of time during his formative years in a polio ward, which is credited as the source of his darkly askew output. 

Another common visual in his work is the collage of common household objects, usually presented in a jumble, and rarely as true representations of those items but rather as hazy absences of them; almost as if someone took an x-ray of a junk drawer and transferred the negative image to canvas.  You can see what I mean with the assemblage of scissors, bits of string and other household junk floating within the menacing amoebic form in the 1973 piece Untitled (face on yellow) below (from the Corbett vs. Dempsey website here). Are these the commingled specters of the items we consider garbage but refuse to wholly part with, confronting the viewer to let them know that they may have been confined to a darkened drawer somewhere, but that they do in fact still exist and can still serve a purpose (for if they couldn't, would they have been kept around in the first place)? Is that somehow related to the artist's interment in a polio ward as a child? No idea.

Whatever it is that drives Dominick Di Meo to produce the art that he does, I am a definite fan of the output. He eventually found his way back to New York where he continues to live and make art. Collected below are some more of my favorite Dominick Di Meo pieces.

"The Soft Torso Breathes" 1964; synthetics on canvas.

 

"Invalid With Mirror" 1973; synthetic polymer transfer on canvas.

"Untitled" c. 1970; acrylic, polymer, shaped elements, and tacks
on three canvases.

"Harlequinade" c. 1965; oil on canvas. 

Native Women & Chicago Imagists

Mechanical bank developed by Daniel Cooke for the Hubley
Manufacturing Co., on display at the MIA.

A visit to the MIA is never less than inspiring. I made a trip to the Minneapolis Institute of Art this past weekend to see the Hearts Of Our People: Native Women Artists exhibit. I didn't take any pictures of the experience because: a) many of the pieces on display were prohibited from being photographed at the artist's or donor's request; and b) it was an immersive experience with lots of multi-media components, and constantly withdrawing from that to stop and snap dimly-lit pictures on my iPhone seemed to countermand the purpose of the exhibition itself. I definitely recommend the visit, though, and you can get a peek at some of the pieces here on MIA's website, including one of my favorites of the exhibition, a series of clay tower sculptures by Santa Clara Pueblo native artist Nora Naranjo Morse.

Here are some examples of her work, including a detail of the series of sculptures on display (bottom pic) at the MIA:

"Khwee-seng (Woman-man)" Nora Naranjo Morse at
The Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ.

I recommend checking out Nora Naranjo Morse's website here. According to her website she's moved away from ceramics and into utilizing recycled materials and recently opened an exhibit with her daughter Eliza in Redwood City, CA.

On my way out of the Hearts Of Our People exhibit, I walked out into the rotunda designated as Gallery G280, which had a number of recent acquisitions hanging on the wall; some pieces holdovers from the recent display focusing on Hairy Who and The Chicago Imagist movement. Up until that point I had been woefully ignorant of the Chicago Imagist movement as an art movement and of the MIA even having had a spotlight exhibit dedicated to it. I definitely left with a list of names to do further research on!

Art Green "United Opposition" oil on canvas, 1975.

Ray Yoshida "Miraculous Matriarch" acrylic on canvas, 1980.

Roger Brown "Skyscraper"  oil on canvas with painted frame, 1971.

Errol Ortiz "Astronaut Targets" acrylic on canvas, 1965.

Jim Denomie "Vatican Cafe" oil on canvas, 2014.

Dominick Di Meo "Untitled (Red line with heads)" mixed media on Masonite, 1952. 

There's a great website that gives a good overview of the Hairy Who & The Chicago Imagist movement here, though be warned it is quite media-heavy and even with contemporary internet speeds and blink-of-the-eye media plug-in loading, the media hasn't all been necessarily streamlined and compressed to modern standards. The navigation leans more towards the novelty than the user-friendly as well, though the site is packed with great information and examples of each artist's work.

You can read about a recent controversy involving Ojibwe artist Jim Denomie's piece "Standing Rock 2016" and a Minnesota House Republican's offense at his depiction of Donald Trump here.