David Rathman

"I Threw Away the Rose"
2003
oil on canvas
30" x 38" (Click on image to see full version)

For his second solo exhibition at Clementine, Minneapolis-based artist David Rathman presents a series of oil paintings which explore the collective mythology of the American Old West. In previous bodies of work, Rathman utilized ink and paper to depict his subject matter. Scaling up and working with oil paint, Rathman fine tunes his compositions, rendering minimalist figures within vast and vacant landscapes as well as close up portraits of weathered cowboys.

Culling his subject matter from polaroids taken of projections from movies, Rathman evokes compelling narratives. A storyteller at heart, he sometimes incorporates text into the paintings and other times allows the imagery to speak for itself, allowing for more ambiguous interpretations. Sources for text include cinematic dialogue, song lyrics, and quotes by philosophers and politicians while imagery derives from Westerns by John Ford and other Hollywood masters of the genre.

David Rathman’s work was recently featured in the two-person show Dialogues at The Walker Art Center and in The Altoids Collection exhibition at The New Museum of Contemporary Art. Recent reviews of his work have appeared in Art in America, Tema Celeste, Time Out New York, and New York Magazine.

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