Taymour Grahne Gallery is pleased to present Natural Memory, a solo exhibition of recent work by Iowa City-based artist John Dilg. The show’s imagery derives from an ongoing meditation on Dilg’s relationship to the land and its ability to conjure vivid, visual memories. These paintings and works on paper are also codified summaries of locality and place. In terms of the fragility the contemporary land possesses, the artist’s concern acts to foster the views of regret and the sense of latent danger that often occur in his paintings.

These are not landscape paintings, rather, they are intended as records of a tendency to view and remember (in an abstract, metaphoric language) Dilg’s relationship with the land. The artist believes that one’s memory of the land is a reservoir of abstraction; it functions as a personal framework in service to both survival and the kind of advantageous “beauty” found in natural encounter.

John Dilg received a B.F.A. in Painting and Filmmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design. One and two-person exhibitions include: Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY, (2-P), 2014; Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston, 2013; Regina Rex, Queens, (2-P), 2013, and Rhodes College, Memphis, 2012. Group exhibitions include Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta, 2015; Sikkema Jenkins & Co., NY, 2012; Lesley Heller Workspace, NY, 2011; and Edward Thorp Gallery, NY, 2010.

Dilg’s works are in the collections of several institutions, including the Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR; the Figge Museum of Art, Davenport, IA; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, among others. Reviews include Art in America, The New York Times, The New Art Examiner and The Boston Globe.