Towards Harmony, 2004, Wes Memeger (born 1939), Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 inches. Courtesy of the artist. © Wes Memeger
October 19, 2022
Amie Potsic interviews Margaret Winslow, Chief Curator and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Delaware Art Museum about her new exhibition of painter Wes Memeger.
Square, Circles, Arcs, and Lines Together, 2019, Wes Memeger (born 1939), Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 72 inches. Courtesy of the artist. © Wes Memeger
Margaret Winslow currently lives and works in Wilmington, Delaware where she is the Chief Curator of Contemporary Art at the Delaware
Art Museum. She has curated for the Neuberger Museum of Art and The Delaware Contemporary and assisted with exhibits for the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Recent exhibitions at the Delaware Art Museum include Afro-American Images 1971: The Vision of Percy Ricks, Black
Survival Guide, or How to Live Through a Police Riot, a 2018 commission by Hank Willis Thomas; Truth & Vision: 21st Century Realism; Dream Streets: Art in Wilmington 1970-1990; and Retro-Active: Performance Art from 1964-1987. Margaret has served as an evaluator for the Headlands Center for the Arts, an adjunct faculty member at the University of Delaware, and a radio host for Art Watch on WCHE 1520 AM. Public presentations include talks at the Beijing American Center in China, the College Art Association, and the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums.
Margaret holds a BA in Art History from the University of Mary Washington and an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art, Theory, and Criticism from SUNY Purchase College.
About the Exhibition
Wes Memeger has explored the square for decades. In his early career as a chemist, he analyzed the skewed bonds in an almost square carbon and hydrogen compound. As an artist, Memeger studied the works of abstract painters, reading and viewing their considerations of the basic and ubiquitous shape.
Drawing from these seemingly disparate backgrounds, Memeger uses the square as a building block, developing abstract compositions that layer form, color, and texture. The artist adds circles and arcs, gold leaf, or fluorescent colors creating works that capture for him, “significant dynamism, but at the same time, surprising tranquility.” The paintings in this exhibition are as much about the square as they are about our perceptions of supposedly rigid shapes in our world and their slightly, but constantly, shifting nature.
Wes Memeger: The Square and Other Concerns is on view at the Delaware Art Museum through January 22, 2023.
Wes Memeger: The Square and Other Concerns
Exhibition dates:
October 15, 2022 - January 22, 2023 at the Delaware Art Museum
Towards Disharmony II, 2003, Wes Memeger (born 1939), Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36 inches. Collection of Kim Memeger. © Wes Memeger
Towards an Eccentric Square, 1998, Wes Memeger (born 1939), Acrylic on paper, 20 x 25 inches. Courtesy of the artist. © Wes Memeger
Square Dance, 1999–2000, Wes Memeger (born 1939), Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches. Courtesy of the artist. © Wes Memeger
Click here to learn more about Wes Memeger: The Square and Other Concerns.
For more information about the Delaware Art Museum, visit: https://delart.org/
or follow them on Instagram @delartmuseum.
Banner Image: Ziptych with Solid Cylinder Plus 3 Open Cylinders, 2017. Wes Memeger (born 1939).
Acrylic on shaped canvas with acrylic and Plexiglas, cylinders on board, 27 7/8 x 74 x 1 ½ inches.
Courtesy of the artist. © Wes Memeger