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You Are Walking Down Bryant Avenue by Dietrich Sieling
Opening Reception Saturday, April 23, 2022 from 6-9PM
Exhibition Runs: April 23 – May 22, 2022
You Are Walking Down Bryant Avenue by Dietrich Sieling takes us on a journey through the past two years of the pandemic. Sieling's drawings are meticulous renderings of encounters and moments in his life, a world expressed in bold colors and lines that vibrate with energy.
“My drawings right now are buildings that I walk by every day. Apartments and houses. I am in some of the drawings and people that I love and see and want to see are in some of the drawings. It is a different time with these drawings. Wearing masks and having coffee outside and walking and thinking about the streets and my neighborhood. And looking at my photo albums, at the people that I love and wish to see. I put them in my drawings. I have many, many drawings about different times. These drawings are about this time.” -Dietrich Sieling
Sieling’s drawings are a map of experiences elevated into a world of profound wonder; every line has personality whether it delineates a friend or a building and his sense of color creates an invitation into this world that is impossible to resist. Colored pencil applied with such intentionality it achieves a high gloss, embossing the paper as though it was carved into stone, artifacts of Sieling’s observations.
His art finds the hidden joy and complexity of the everyday, drawn from both memory and photos that Sieling takes with his red kodak camera; his visual language has many recurring motifs including spring green shades of exit door lights in city buses, Espresso shaded coffee circles (hidden everywhere), refrigerator fans humming with intricately drawn lines, and Oreo cookies. For Sieling his travels down Bryant Avenue are a way to document time, changes sometimes subtle on a street that is dear to his heart, capturing the way things inevitably change with both nostalgia and an optimism for future discoveries.
Dietrich Sieling lives in Minneapolis and is a full-time artist living with complex autism. His art has been featured in solo exhibitions at Bockley Gallery, whom also represents him, and Minnesota Museum of American Art in the Twin Cities; as well as Kabinett & Kammer and Governors Island in New York City; and group exhibitions including the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, ND; and Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis. His work is also in numerous private collections and has been featured in SooVAC’s series, Collect Call, an exhibition of selected works from local collectors. In addition to his solo exhibition at SooVAC, Sieling also has an upcoming exhibition at Lagoon New York in Brooklyn.
