Derrick Buisch featured in Shepherd Express article

*Click HERE to read article on Shepherd Express website

Derrick Buisch’s ‘Remarks in Color’ at Tory Folliard

BY SHANE MCADAMS - MAY 24, 2023

I finally made it in to see a show of paintings by Derrick Buisch at Tory Folliard this week (up through May 27) and it caught me off guard a little. Not because his exhibition “Remarks in Color” is mind-bendingly beyond what I expected from him; but rather because it was exactly what I expected, in just the right way, like seeing an old friend. 

I’ve known Buisch’s work for a long time, and he’s one of the few artists I can honestly say gets me incrementally closer to possessing a complete understanding of his point-of-view with each painting I see. Each piece builds not on the last, but towards an entire perspective. Like how a conversation with someone evolves slowly over time, revealing detail after detail about the underlying character of the person across from you. It doesn’t matter where it goes, because it’s all revealing an indirect portrait of an entire multi-dimensional human personality. This show didn’t just do that, it revealed the nature “that” in general. 

When one first encounters Buisch’s pared down graphic forms, often set against a monochromatic background, they can’t be blamed for wondering what the storyline is. His works are almost always spare and economical. Bluespikesspring for instance isn’t going to blow your mind with an epic yarn, but it’ll give you plenty of threads to follow through his work. The 24 x 24-inch spiky, powder-blue form against a tangerine background tells you just a few things about what he’s on about. But you only learn this as you keep on rapping with it. Color Cat Chart #4 offers another enclosed shape of a thick impasto line. One starts to infer that the subjects are meant to live in an intentional purgatory between shape and figure, between abstract and concrete, and between graphics and rendered form. 

Primary Colors

His use of color and pattern ply similarly ambiguous territory. In the case of Bluespikesspring and Color Cat Chart #4, each employs an almost academically referential scheme. The former a complementary, optical tension, and the latter a primary color chart. As for pattern and surface, the former uses a from-the-tube-impasto line on a flat field and the latter a messy-but-regular benday pattern on a clean unmodulated background. 

The conversation continues to move. Creature Weather Head, another marginal lifeform, lies on a bed of the dense, matte primary-red that sent me back to the tangerine background in Bluespikesspring, and made me reconsider its nature. Like I might’ve a remark in a good verbal exchange, I recalled something in the past and folded it back into the moment. It’s a dynamic, reciprocal, and always unfolding story. And this is true of Buisch’s work beyond the canvas, from his record collection, to the ‘zines he’s produced, to the ephemera he collects, to the photographic observations about improbable color moments he takes. Not everyone is privy to this comprehensive bag of things, but it’s not important because the paintings get there in good time. 

Buisch’s work made me think about how every artist I know has an at-the-ready way of addressing gimmicky art contrivances; the kind fathers-in-law and first year art students trot out as “really amazing!!!” I for instance tell my students that most artists realize that the opportunity to make a photorealistic portrait of Marilyn Monroe out of Gummi Bears is always available, it’s just not taken. A friend once told me he simply calls such things “Mad Libs Art.” It’s probably the same with any creative pursuit. I’m sure Max Richter or Wynton Marsalis both know that a chestnut like “California Gurls” by Katy Perry is always out there, but they choose to go in another direction, in pursuit of open waters and their own unique intercourse with the world. I reminded myself as I left Tory Folliard and Derrick Buisch’s latest paintings that it’s the journey, not the destination, the conversation not the consummation.

Derrick Buisch and Laurie Hogin Featured in Rockford Art Museum exhibition, "Sonic Disruptions"

*To read Press Release on the Rockford Art Museum website, please click HERE.

FEB 7–MAY 25, 2020 | ROCKFORD ART MUSEUMSPONSORED BY SMITH CHARITABLE FOUNDATION, COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF NORTHERN ILLINOIS + ROCKFORD AREA ARTS COUNCIL

This 15-week major exhibition features Derrick Buisch and Laurie Hogin who use color, imagery, narrative, and symbols to stimulate our senses and challenge our perceptions. Vibrating lines morph into playful symbols of pop culture and brilliant color combinations provide jolts of electric energy in paintings. Meant to be visually engaging and potentially unnerving, Buisch combines evocative imagery with moments of uneasy hilarity. Hogin creates beautiful yet bizarre apocalyptic landscapes and allegorical animal portraits saturated in brilliant color and imbued with elaborate narratives reflecting pop culture and the human experience. Deeply concerned by the social and political issues in our contemporary culture, her dazzling yet disturbing narrative allegories portray the disastrous effects of drug abuse, altered food sources, over-consumerism and misguided political and economic forces.

Also featured in this dynamic exhibition is a custom-designed playlist and reading list of the artists’ favorite music and books, as well as related programming.

Derrick Buisch received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, and his MFA from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. A professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison since 1997, he has exhibited regionally and nationally. Buisch is represented in several public and private collections, including Rockford Art Museum.

Laurie Hogin received her BFA from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Now Associate Director and Director of Graduate Studies at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she has exhibited across the country and around the world. Laurie Hogin is represented in numerous public and private collections, including the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois; Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso, Indiana; Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and Rockford Art Museum.

Urban Milwaukee Reviews CHROMA

*To read the original article on the Urban Milwaukee website, please click HERE

Oh So Many Colors

From the CHROMA exhibit. Photo by Catherine Jozwik.

By Catherine Jozwik - Jan 8th, 2020 03:42 pm

The Tory Folliard Gallery’s current exhibition, CHROMA, features the works of 10 artists who favor brilliant hues, who explore the fascinating relationships between colors and their powerful impact on art.

“Color serves as an open-ended question for a number of artists. A recent renewed interest in color is evidenced by a number of new books on the subject being published,” UW-Madison Professor of Art Derrick Buisch is quoted in the show’s description. “Color is a favorite topic of articles, as its history opens up tales of the fantastic nature of pigments.”

On display through February 8, CHROMA showcases the paintings of Buisch, Terrence Coffman, Ben Grant, Michael Hedges, Shane McAdams, Clarence Morgan, Jason Rohlf, and T.L. Solien, along with aluminum sculptures by Richard Taylor and glassworks by Jeremy Popelka.

Representing every color under the spectrum, from warm golds and oranges to shocking pinks and soothing greens to cool blues and royal purples, CHROMA is a treat for the eyes. Visiting the exhibition is an especially appealing excursion on a gray winter day (like the somber Saturday when this writer visited the gallery).

Most of the works, including those of Solien, who describes himself as an artist of the “absurdist cultural critique,” Rohlf’s meditative collage-based paintings, Coffman’s richly-layered landscapes, and Hedges’ experimentations with form and texture, are abstracted and utilize geometric shapes; notably, triangles and spirals. Solien’s “Nimrod’s Path” and “Man on Path” brings to mind stained-glass windows and kaleidoscopes. With interlocking shapes and lines reminiscent of maps, Morgan’s graphite, watercolor, and ink drawings capture the nature of fleeting thoughts and social and political upheaval, while Buisch’s graphic-inspired “monster” drawings, outlined in light colors, pop against bold blue and bright orange backgrounds.

Several artists employ unexpected media in their works, with dazzling results. For example, McAdams’ paintings, thin stripes of vibrant colors set against pieces of tree stumps, were created using the ink of ballpoint pens. Grant’s “Untitled #300,” (acrylic, automotive paint, ball point pen, colored pencil, enamel, graphite, oil, and spray paint on canvas) is hypnotic.

The exhibit is rounded out by works from Taylor and Popelka. Taylor’s lively “Golden 1” and “Golden 4” sculptures depict a female and a male figure standing atop a series of multicolored blocks of various sizes, works which pay homage to the sculptor’s love of music, poetry and travel. Popelka’s breathtaking glass vases were blown using Murrini (an ancient Middle Eastern technique revived by 16h century Venetian glassmakers on Murrano, often resulting in a mosaic-like effect). “In the impressive body of work created for CHROMA, he explores new patterns inspired by ancient textiles and revisits Venetian favorites,” reads a gallery press release.

“Color is a constant and continuous conversation among artists, a subject that very quickly transcends its rote charts and color wheels to become a force, a driver, a motivator, an endless riddle, and for some, a clear obsession,” Buisch said. “Since the Bauhaus, color continues to be a staple among art school foundation curriculums. This entry-level position in serious art education does not belie the depth that the subject can run for artists.”

CHROMA featured in Milwaukee Magazine - January, 2015

The exhibition CHROMA was featured as a "Best Bet" in Milwaukee Magazine's January issue. Here is what editor Clare Hanan had to say:

Tom Berenz, GARDEN ABOVE THE LAKE, Acrylic, Oil, and Spray Paint on Canvas, 60 x 72"

Color Rush

Bright, permeating and myriad colors can often be curative in an oppressively cold environment. This month, works of all shades fill Tory Folliard Gallery, including those of metal sculptor Richard Taylor, along with Jason Rohlf’s geometric, dizzying acrylic paintings and Derrick Buisch’s oil abstractions. Jeremy Popelka’s amoeba-like glass sculptures will provoke and perplex. And Mark Ottens’ multilayered, psychedelic paintings will offer a study in painstaking self-discipline. Collectively, it’s a remedy with just enough burn to get those neurons firing again. (Claire Hanan)

➞ Chroma (Jan. 9-Feb. 28). Tory Folliard Gallery. 233 N. Milwaukee St., 414-273-7311, toryfolliard.com.