Don Eddy

[1][2] He gained recognition in American art around 1970 amid a group of artists that critics and dealers identified as Photorealists or Hyperrealists, based on their work's high degree of verisimilitude and use of photography as a resource material.

[17][16] After exploring and rejecting the prevailing mode of abstract expressionist subjectivity, he was drawn to the more accessible work of Surrealist René Magritte and the commercialized realism of Pop artist James Rosenquist, both of which juxtaposed incongruous images in a single painting space.

[14] Eddy's work has been informed by wide-ranging, sometimes contradictory influences: old masters (e.g., van Eyck and Vermeer), Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist color, the analytical cubism of Braque and Picasso, Hans Hofmann, Conceptual and Minimalist critiques of Abstract Expressionism, and Pop art.

"[33][9][7] Likewise, it seems to value photographic verisimilitude, yet in fact, exceeds the camera and human eye by heightening painting attributes such as optical brilliance, tactile highlighting and multiple perspectives.

"[9] In the "Private Parking" series (1971), Eddy depicted cars seen through chain-link fences hung with signage, using the crisscrossing patterns and abstract shapes to intensify contradictions between illusionism and the single-plane picture surface.

[41][42][1] Critics described that cycle—stripped to an austere palette of icy blues and silvers—as inducing a "perceptual overload"[43] where dazzling optical play and complexity reduced space and imagery to nearly unrecognizable abstract patterns (e.g., Silverware V for S, 1977; G-I, 1978).

[7] By the late 1980s, the everyday quality of Eddy's past work was overtaken by imagery that seemingly spanned the universe, from microscopic to cosmic: flora and fauna, landscape, figures, architecture and art history (e.g., The Clearing II, 1990; Oracle Bones, 1996).

[7][28] Eddy employed a new multi-panel strategy to capture this quality: geometric polyptychs, grids (Catena Aureum, 1995), and most significantly, medieval altarpiece formats that were vehicles for poetic juxtapositions encouraging contemplation (e.g., Imminent Desire and Distant Longing II, 1993).

[28][18] In his exhibition at the Museu Europeu d'Art Modern (Barcelona, 2014), Eddy presented eight largely rectangular triptychs created between 2005 and 2011 that combined natural, architectural, and gradually, urban imagery (e.g., Nostos I, 2005; Mono No Aware II, 2011).