Press

Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY – My Own Backyard, a group show featuring work by David Konigsberg on view through July 31st

Traditional, yet innovative; reflective, yet distant, David Konigsberg’s landscapes and still lifes are rife with double-backs and unexpected turns. A self-proclaimed “solitary wanderer,” Konigsberg gathers imagery and visions from long walks through the Catskills, through surrounding terrain, and through his own backyard. He views all as equally minute and equally monumental, from a peaked horizon to a burst of petals collected from his garden. This confluence of near and distant perspectives creates an almost literary quality; the intimacy of first-person voice jockeying with the scope of an omniscient narrator. David’s paintings resist a certain aboutness, allowing simultaneous narratives to proliferate across the bodies of his canvases, culminating in an emotional sucker punch.

Konigsberg’s latest collection of paintings are an attenuation of his experience during the pandemic. His characteristic use of scumble appears thickened and dense in Cumulus in Wide Field and From Sargent #1. David’s brushstrokes have a muscularity to them reminiscent of woodcut prints, carving into the canvas rather than sitting atop its surface. This is in part utilitarian–a strategy to ensure that his smaller canvases have visual impact from across the room. But the force of his physicality in these landscapes suggests an overwhelming subjectivity, as well. Konigsberg reflects, “I don’t feel separated from what I’m in.” Mood and memory shape his landscapes, capturing the most intimate, interior moments, and distilling them into visions of his surroundings.

Read the full show review here.