Douglas Melini Represented by Miles McEnery Gallery

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MILES McENERY GALLERY is delighted to announce its representation of Douglas Melini.

Douglas Melini is a mixed media artist whose paintings and collages investigate color and space. His hard-edged abstract paintings use color, geometry and pattern to create an eccentric visual experience for the viewer.

For over the past twenty years, Melini has explored the abstract and pictorial nature of image making.

Most recently Melini’s work has engaged with the landscape, focusing on abstraction in nature. The artist refers to these new works as Tree Paintings. The paintings are made from weathered, reclaimed wood, then stained, and merged with paintings made from densely applied layers of oil paint on linen. The juxtaposition of the naturally eroded surface of the wood with hand applied, brushed layers of accumulated oil paint creates an enticingly meticulous texture. The work conflates the visual realms of geometric abstraction with the natural order of environmental creation.

In addition to the recent paintings, Melini has been creating intimate collages composed from a wide variety of mushrooms, staged against a backdrop of fluid, vivid layers of watercolor. These works are then finished with handmade frames also made from stained reclaimed wood. Melini’s hand-painted artist frames operate as a wholly separate entity in their own right. They generate a sculptural presence by activating the piece from all angles ultimately fusing image and object.

DOUGLAS MELINI (b. 1972) received his Bachelor of Arts from Maryland, College Park in 1994 and his Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts in 1997. He completed an artist residency at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation, Brooklyn, NY in 2011-2012.

Recent solo exhibitions include “Into the Woods,” SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC; “Starry Sky,” Van Doren Waxter, New York, NY; “When the Moon Hangs on the Wall: Landscapes, Seascapes, and Abstracts,” Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR; “Douglas Melini,” Phillip Slein Gallery, St. Louis, MO; “You Have to Peer Into the Sky to See the Stars,” 11R, New York, NY; “Douglas Melini,” Eleven Rivington, New York, NY; “A Sharing of Color and Being Part of It,” Feature Inc., New York, NY; “It Flows Over Us Without Meaning,” Minus Space, Brooklyn, NY; “Beyond the Dirty Light,” Ursula Werz, Tubingen, Germany; “Positively Do Not Block the Gate,” Rocket Gallery, London, UK; “White Room,” White Columns, New York, NY and “Head On,” Homeroom, Munich, Germany.

Recent group exhibitions include “Energy in All Directions,” Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, New York; “Chroma,” Van Doren Waxter, New York, NY; “STARS,” Philip Slein Gallery, St Louis, MO; “Pulled in Brooklyn,” International Print Center New York, New York, NY; “The Twenty By Sixteen Biennial,” Morgan Lehman, New York, NY; “People, Place and Things...,” Philip Slein Gallery, St Louis, MO; “Geometric Behavior,” Ikast Kunstpakhuset, Copenhagen, Denmark; Edge, Philip Slein Gallery, St Louis, MO;

“Confluence/Influence in Contemporary Abstraction,” Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, Long Island City, NY; Eat a Peach, Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY, “Breaking Pattern,” Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR and “Colour and Line”, Raygun Projects, Toowoomba, Australia.

Melini has been involved in numerous curatorial projects including “Between This Light and That and Space,” Minus Space, Brooklyn, NY; “Douglas Melini/Take 5,” Progress Report; “Viewlist: I Can Read in Red, I Can Read In Blue, I Can Read in Pickle Color Too...”, Minus Space, New York, NY and “The Difficult Shapes of Possible Images,” ZieherSmith Gallery, New York, NY.

He is the recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts’ Fellowship in Painting, Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Studio Residency and Change Inc. Grant. His work is included in the permanent collections of The Daimler Collection, Berlin, Germany; The Jill and Peter Kraus Collection, Dutchess County, NY; Neuberger Berman LLC, New York, NY; The Progressive Corporation, Cleveland, OH; Wellspring Capital Corporation, New York, NY; and The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery Collection at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York.

Douglas Melini lives and works in New Jersey.