Dancing with yourself can be deeply lonely, or a sign of being completely at one with yourself. People today know both.
People of Our Time
Guy Denning and John Wentz depict people of the present day. On the one hand, there are self-promoters who, in self-imposed isolation, strive to live up to the illusion of a social media community: people willing to reshape their personality to the point of losing their sense of self. On the other hand, there are characters full of self-confidence who, in a sensed, almost ecstatic connection with the whole, embody strength and independence. A dance on the edge of a volcano, a dance with oneself.
Two Signatures
Both artists focus on the depiction of people. With their very different painting techniques, they manage to unite meticulous detail with diffusion and dissolution in an unmistakable way. John Wentz, who paints primarily in oil, renders parts of his portraits with a photorealistic quality, while leaving other areas roughly sketched with broad brushstrokes. Guy Denning works primarily in charcoal and chalk and is a master at depicting the expression and emotions of his protagonists precisely and palpably with just a few strokes.
"Dancing with Myself"
An exhibition of works by Guy Denning and John Wentz
Opening
Friday, 27 September 2019, 7 – 10 pm
Exhibition
27 September – 31 October 2019
Monday – Friday, 11 am – 7 pm and by appointment
Pretty Portal
Brunnenstraße 12
40223 Düsseldorf
John Wentz
John Wentz is a contemporary painter whose work explores the human figure and its nature. He experiments with a combination of classical and modern painting techniques, aiming to reduce what he depicts to its most essential elements: composition, colour and texture, as only painting can.
John Wentz was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. His interest in art began at the age of six, when he first discovered Batman and Spider-Man comics. For years, he copied them panel by panel, laying the foundations early on for his later work as a muralist, poster artist and freelance illustrator. Having perfected his skills with the spray can, he decided to turn to fine art and to work with classical techniques such as oil painting. Since then, he has shown his work in three solo exhibitions in San Francisco and in numerous group exhibitions in the US and abroad. His work has been widely published and has received several awards.
Guy Denning
Guy Denning was born in North Somerset in 1965. He has been obsessed with visual art since childhood and started painting in oils at the age of eleven, after receiving a set of old paints from a relative who had grown bored with them. Throughout the 1980s, his applications to study painting at degree level were repeatedly unsuccessful, but he continued painting while studying art history with the Open University and learning painting technique from older painters he knew in the West of England. From 1992, he exhibited across Britain, and since 2007 he has also exhibited in the United States, Germany, Italy and France. His paintings have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions. His work is held in several public collections, including the Politics Department of the University of Bristol, the Political Science Department of the University of Galway and the MAGI'900 Museum of Contemporary Art in Bologna.
Guy Denning's work combines a traditional painterly style with a contemporary, punk-inspired twist of embedded collaged and stencilled text. This aesthetic, blended with a political narrative, has earned Denning a loyal following among collectors of urban art.
"Urban art is not a new phenomenon. People have been declaring their presence, their humour, their fears and their anger in the streets for as long as there have been streets for it to be seen in. It's the most democratic form of art; it's a medium that is available to any that feel the need to use it. With the acceptance and celebration of graffiti culture in the twentieth century it has come to a point where it is now sited behind the streets, in fashionable galleries. Yes, fashions change, but don't ever think that the graffiti will fade away. That particular writing has always been on the wall."
– Guy Denning
