In the studio: Josh Dorman discusses his latest show, Reliquary, with filmmaker Federico Posatti

John Martin Gallery
Apr 17, 2018 1:31PM

Ahead of his London show, here's a look around Josh Dorman's studio in New York and the most recent work for Reliquary at the John Martin Gallery

"​Each of Josh Dorman's works, like a dream, is at once a window and a mirror, opening onto a landscape of chimeras and strange juxtapositions, never before seen yet instantly recognizable, as familiar as the outlines of our own secret reflections."

-Michael Chabon

Josh Dorman | Dazzle Ship | Drawing, Collage or other Work on Paper | 18 x 18 ins | 2018

Josh Dorman was born in Baltimore in 1966. He studied at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs before completing his MFA at Queen’s College, Flushing, New York, where he now lives and works at his studio in East Harlem. Recent solo exhibitions have included Ryan Lee, New York and Koplin Del Rio, Los Angeles, as well as the Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles. You might stubble across his work in the collections of the Minneapolis Academy of Art Museum, The Butler Institute of American Art and The Naples Museum or in seven short animations for a DVD collaboration entitled The Violin with composer Anna Clyne. To set Dorman in time his shows have been reviewed in Art Forum, ArtNews, The New York Times, Art in America, The Paris Review and most recently Numero Cinq.

In Josh Dorman work he creates extraordinary visions from corruptions of nineteenth century maps and book engravings. The interplay between the collaged images, which lie upon delicate painted areas, in turn embedded into the surface of old maps form complete compositions of continuous fascination. The skill and success of Dorman’s work is encased in the multi-layers and traces which effortlessly form both new topographic surfaces, and personal landscapes, illustrating a new, beguiling world.

Reliquary opens at John Martin Gallery on 27th April and runs until 19th May. It's free and we're up on the first floor come to see and explore the works in the gallery or online. We're open from 10 - 6 Mon to Fri and 10 - 1:30 on Saturday.

"No plan, no agenda, no constraint. If there is a formal method underlying Dorman's art, it would be this: You find it in the act of doing it, and each time you do it, you discover something you hadn't known before."

—​Paul Auster, CUE Catalog essay

John Martin Gallery