DEB has a process. Simple and profound. It is: recycling paint, up and down, from floor to wall, wet-dry-scrape-repeat. In a garage – randomly situated – like Pollock’s barn. The paintings appear deceptively old-school like abstract expressionism yet are actually innovative, timely, and unprecedented. The aim is not to show a new perspective within the frame or even to show a new heroic act – but to make material speak. In this pursuit the paintings are even more affected by the artist’s geist than were the old timers. Thus they are four dimensional, topological. It is as if the material is of her own flesh…as it is with a woman…a mother. Maybe this is how she “casts off the father” – in a way that shows the “heroic force” of her life, her drive. The “neo-brutalism” and “concrete alchemy” of DEB’s work make possible a new “object-language” that incorporates its own “meta-language” altering the relationship of the artist to the critic, collector, and gallery. The work is a form of post-conceptual base materialism: analytic, abject, sacred in its singularity – the remainder of a life lived as performance.
For the duration of the pandemic DEB has pioneered the artist-in-residency program at LIBERTINE, along with her husband BOYD and their son. They have worked to transform the space and operations of the gallery for future exhibitions of other Guild members, while DEB has produced her new body of work in the studio. The installation and performance reveals for the first time the material action, psychic healing, and spiritual alchemy behind DEB’s paintings.
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