Kim Dingle
The Unseen
Kim Dingle, Floorplan, 2002, Ink and oil pastel on paper, Framed Dimensions: 19 x 20 inches
Los Angeles 1949: the 17-year-old Walter Hopps first visited the home of East Coast transplants Walter and Louise Arensberg. The home was packed floor to ceiling with an extensive art collection of modern masters that seemed endless. Works were hidden and stored behind and under other art works, pieces of furniture, and doors. To see the smaller works, Hopps had to get on his hands and knees to peer under, and or through, the beautiful obstacles to see the unseen. Smaller works, earlier work, maquettes, studies of works never to be completed, and that of what would inform seminal to the artists practices. Essentially, more diminutive versions of aforementioned masterpieces.
“Paintings were jammed and crowded on every available space from floor to ceiling,” reported New York Times art critic Aline Louchheim after her 1949 visit to the couple’s five-bedroom Hollywood home. “They filled the porch, trembled on the backs of doors, [and] lined the bathrooms.”
Hopps found himself mesmerized by the collection and he returned to the home multiple times where he established close friendships with Walter Arensberg and Marcel Duchamp. The newly found friendship with Duchamp sparked Hopps’ interest in what the curator termed “experiments”. These experiments emphasized the significance of the sensitivity of art materials and their interface with objects, ideas, artists and the viewer. Thus, signifying the significance of the Unseen.
I had the good fortune to know Walter Hopps toward the end of his life. We discussed our fascination and interest in ephemera, an artist’s smaller works, studies, and other unseen pieces. The way such works helped guide us toward a clearer view, a closer glimpse of the true hand, the talent, and the mind of the artist. It is here where we can really try and know the artist and the artistic practice – these Unseen works help us peek into the artists heart, and soul of the work.
Every artist has such treasures stashed around their studios and homes: inside drawers, cupboards, boxes, closets, rooms – and in some cases - unused refrigerators, and ovens.
I am pleased to announce the launch of The Unseen, A virtual gallery platform for the exhibition of works that speak to lifelong art practices: Works dug out of long forgotten funky file systems. And, yes – the work is for sale!
It is my honor to inaugurate this new platform with an exhibition of works by my longtime friend and colleague Kim Dingle. More than 30 years ago we had our first visit in the Dingle Boyle Heights studio. The meeting began as a regular, more formal visit. Works were either hung on the walls, or leaning against the walls. The conversation went on for over an hour, we may have popped out to eat and went back to the studio… Then, Dingle walked over to her long-defunct oven, pulled down the door and ta-da! It was there she revealed two small masterpieces she had been hiding: the Unseen paintings.
Here we are today, with our 30+ year relationship and Dingle still has art work that has never been seen. Decades of practice, many early, unfinished works. Studies for larger works and ideas – treasures that have never been exhibited publicly.