For this exhibition, Dettmer presents a new collection of oil paintings that translate a flux of dissociated images into his own distinctive language of flat realism. A textural focus on surface and shade flesh out flat surfaces with a sculptural sense of softness and weight, creating figures of intense and specified interest by abstracting everyday scenes from their broader contexts. Inexplicably varied in subject matter, Dettmer’s disparate images obliquely reference the rich visual history of our global past. Yet by refusing to explain themselves through a clear conceptual narrative, Dettmer’s paintings reveal how moments of radical visual difference may begin to converse through a uniform style of painting. What captures Dettmer’s attention thus also intrigues his audience: how do these images work together, if at at all?
