HEREArt will open its 1999-2000 season with "Dialogues", a solo exhibition in the DOWNUnder Galleryby New York-based social realist painter David B. Abbott.
"If you're open to it there's a story behind every face".
Dialogues explores human interaction. Abbott's current work addresses contemporary political and social issues as varied as the rise and fall of the religious right in this country, political volatility in the Middle East, unfolding events in the former Soviet Union and Balkans, and gay and lesbian politics in the wake of the HIV crisis; all through witnessed dialogues.
Extensive world traveling coupled with avid photo documentation and observance have given Abbott's subsequent acrylic work its distinctive, realist immediacy. Abbott documents interactions on film, found anywhere from the backroads of the European countryside to Main Street, America, and adapts them in acrylics. The visual narratives include an unexpected visit, a reunion, a family portrait, a political debate, and a community plea. Moving through daily exchanges and surroundings, Abbott's varied characters visually compose their experiences of strife, intimacy, duress, tension or basic companionship.
Abbott was born and raised in the Boston area and educated at the Massachusetts College of Art. Abbott's 20-year career includes exhibitions in Boston, New York, Key West, Miami (South Beach), Fire Island and San Francisco where he was dubbed by the press as, "the first queer primitive painter".