7445 N. Campbell Chicago, IL 60645                773.458.3150                [email protected]

Jim Dingilian

           

           

           

           

           


Smoke Drawings employs aspects of photography, memory and the possibility of transcendent moments occurring in mundane or peripheral locations. For several years Dingilian has worked with images of suburban fringe areas such as the edges of parking lots, the backs of shopping centers, and patches of woods between housing developments. His attitude regarding such places is neither ironic nor condemning. Instead, the ubiquity of these locales and their ambiguity -- simultaneously everywhere and nowhere -- make them areas of great potential. They are a type of frontier or no-man's-land that is familiar yet typically overlooked.

This body of work presents delicate images that suggest a photographic process. These drawings are created with candle smoke inside empty glass bottles and are reminiscent of some forgotten 19th-century imaging technique. The artist begins by coating the bottles' inner surfaces with smoke, and then uses brushes and small implements mounted on the ends of dowels to reach inside and slowly, selectively erase certain areas. The smoke, which remains on the glass, forms the images. These curious, wispy miniature environments are dark in tone and exude melancholy and menace. The medium itself, smoke and bottles, introduces the suggestion of narratives of transgression; when found by the sides of roads or in the weeds near the edges of parking lots, empty liquor bottles are artifacts of consumption, delight or dread. The bottles remain as hourglasses marking these trespasses, their drained interiors now inhabited by dim memories.

BIO/ Jim Dingilian was born in York, PA but spent seven years of his childhood in Waterloo, Belgium before returning to the United States. He graduated from the University of Delaware in 1993 and completed his MFA in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1996. Dingilian has been exhibiting drawings on found objects, usually employing inventive erasure techniques, for the last decade. His work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, CO; the Islip Art Museum in East Islip, NY; the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI; the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA, as well as the Aldrich. Dingilian's work can be found in the permanent collections of the DeCordova and the Rose Art Museum in Waltham, MA. He is represented by McKenzie Fine Art in New York.