June Mattingly's - Special "EYE" to watch

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moderndallas.net
Special “Eye” to Watch
June Mattingly // contributing art writer

Aaron Parazette

Aaron Parazette lives in Houston where he arrived in 1990 as Core Fellow of The Glassell School
of the Museum of Art and where he’s represented by McClain Gallery. His MFA is from
Claremont Graduate School in California and he’s a professor at the University of Houston’s
Art School. One of the most important galleries in the world, Marlborough, showed him twice;
the second show was in their new Chelsea, New York space. Yours truly came across him in
2004 in “Perspectives” at Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum.

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Installation of the current show, Dunn and Brown Contemporary

His sumptuous large scaled abstractions in his 2010 one person show at Dunn and Brown
Contemporary in Dallas started on the wall before being transposed to the future owner’
s wall. A Macintosh computer is used to design the complex overall composition and to
create the vibrant color relationships. Using fast drying acrylic paint, Parazette uses the
time-consuming process of taping to perfectly outline the curvaceous geometric shapes
and pastel linear dividers. The flat surface of the finished artwork erases all evidence of
a brushstroke.

As a Californian with a lifelong passion for surfing, his earlier works integrate surfing
slang into the giant Helvetica, Sans Serif letters, the subjects in the paintings. Each
one represents one word or phrase expressed in titles such as “Bitchi,” “Rock Dance,”
“Boink,” “Shine,” “”Surfgod,” Trim,” and “Kooks.” The subtlety of the letters makes
them not necessarily readable as in the arching curve in the “r” in “Trim” and the
interior of the “o” in “Surfgod.”