Eric Dever

Frank Wimberley is not one for procrastination.

Historically, the Sag Harbor-based painter has conceptualized and executed his annual creation for the East End Hospice “Box Art Auction” months ahead of schedule.

Until this year, that is.

For the first time in nearly two decades, the artist was feeling the pressure, considering people are still talking about last summer’s auction — an event he has never missed in its 18 years, and a night he will never forget.

“You know what happened last year, right?” Mr. Wimberley asked with a goodhearted laugh. “I got a bid of the highest it has ever been — a bid of $10,000! I thought it was absolutely amazing. Everybody cheered and jumped up and down. We still can’t get over it. I was at the Parrish Art Museum the other day and they say, ‘You’re the guy!’ It’s nice when somebody remembers you! Everybody likes to be remembered.”

The 92-year-old artist was feeling optimistic ahead of this year’s 19th annual auction on Saturday, August 24, at St. Luke’s Church in East Hampton, where bidders flock to see the collection of small, unadorned boxes transformed into one-of-a-kind creations by some 90 East End artists.

47th Kips Bay Decorator Showhouse
May 2nd - May 30th
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Berry Campbell collaborated with Robert Passal Interior Design and Daniel Kahan of Smith and Moore Architects as well as Sarah Bartholomew Design in the Kips Bay Decorator Showhouse, supplying works by Eric Dever, Perle Fine, and Stephen Pace.

Each year, celebrated interior designers transform a magnificent estate into an elegant exhibition of fine furnishings, art and technology. This all began in 1973 when several dedicated supporters of Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club launched the Kips Bay Decorator Show House in Manhattan to raise critical funds for much needed after school and enrichment programs for New York City children. For more than four decades, the show house has been a must-see event for thousands of design enthusiasts, renowned for sparking interior design trends throughout the world. In 2017, the show house expanded with a second location in Palm Beach, in partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County.

Eric Dever's paintings sent me to reread a sestina by Fairfield Porter that opens, "No color isolates itself like blue. / If the lamp's blue shadow equals the yellow / Shadow of the sky, in what way is one / Different from the other? Was he on the verge of a discovery / When he fell into a tulip's bottomless red? / Who is the mysterious and difficult adversary?"

Who indeed. Color theory can be taught. Color phenomenology has to be submitted to as if it were a cruel and mute master. Dever, for four years in the 2000s, restricted his palette entirely to Titanium and Zinc White. That is how the current works at Berry Campbell come into being with such rightness, though his palette since then has burst open like spring.

July 16, Lavender Pilgrimmage (2018) may be the first predominately purple abstract painting I've ever seen that didn't succumb to the hue's clownishness. He accomplished this by adding various whites, including that of the canvas. Much else is at that level or better, including sonorous intonations like April 1st, Hellebores I (2018). May the discovery never end.

Interesting. Unusual. Uniquely NYC. Highlights of this week’s top events include “The Art of Fashion,” “Eric Dever: Painting in a House Made of Air,” “Race, Sex & Cinema: The World of Marlon Riggs,” and more. Get the NYC-ARTS Top Five in your inbox every Friday and follow @NYCARTS on Twitter to stay abreast of events as they happen.

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Click here to Experience Eric Dever: Painting in a House Made of Air as a VR walking tour thanks to Eazel!

Eric Dever (MA ’88) is a painter who graduated from NYU Steinhardt’s studio art program.

His paintings are part of notable public collections at the Parrish Art Museum, Grey Art Gallery-New York University Art Collection, Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York, and Centre d’Art et de Culture, Saint Just de Bellengard, France. He was in the permanent collection exhibition, Parrish Perspectives: Art in Context at the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York, and on display at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York. Current exhibitions include the U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong, and Macau, Art in Embassies, Department of State exhibition.

Eric Dever: Painting in a House Made of Air is on view this month at Berry Campbell Gallery in New York City. The exhibit features a new body of brilliantly hued, large-scale paintings, which emerged when Dever was planting a garden at his Water Mill, New York, studio.

We spoke to him about his artistic process.

You paint in New York City and the East End of Long Island.  How do these locales influence your work?

My painting during graduate school, 1986-88, was influenced by urban landscape and physical forms of civilization. New to town from Los Angeles, I spent a lot of time in museums and was fascinated walking around the city and boroughs. My paintings were often elegiac; the AIDS crisis concerned everyone. The city was very exciting, one had the sense that anything could happen, and each day held life changing possibilities.

Since 2003, I have worked on the East End of Long Island. It is always exciting to move to a new place and my paintings reflected this change. I began with sampled color from a new landscape, but soon moved towards a more personal experience which space and contemplation seemed to permit.

Working with just white paint for four years gave me a heightened awareness of my material. Canvas, linen, paint media—painting itself became the subject of my work. The addition of black and red corresponded over time with an increasing awareness of the subtle qualities of ‘Clarity, Passion and Dark Inertia’ (exhibition NYU Kimmel Galleries, 2015), or the 3 gunas, a key aspect of yogic studies, and a means of interpreting nature itself.

Eric Dever’s recent paintings literally take over Berry Campbell’s Chelsea space. They hang prolifically and fervently on the white walls, bringing the intense hues of spring and summer into the rooms and warming a cold and wind-blown morning.

The show, titled “Painting in a House Made of Air,” comes alive with the artist’s unabashed use of saturated, matte, electric, and often acid color. The paintings offer scattered references to Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, and even Andy Warhol.

The works on view build on a transformation of the artist’s practice noted in The Star in April of 2017. Before a major illness, Mr. Dever had painted the same way for more than 10 years, choosing a limited square format and a palette consisting of white, black, and red in different combinations at different intervals.

We are preparing for our Eric Dever exhibition, opening on November 15, 2018. Please read our online catalogue to learn more about the artist and his career.

Eric Dever: Painting in a House Made of Air
January 10 - February 9, 2019

Opening Reception
January 10, 2019
6-8 PM

Photo credit Pam Abrahams, Friends of Guild Hall.

Eric Dever | Solo Exhibition
Berry Campbell Gallery
January, 2019

Open Studio for Adults: All About Color
Saturday, August 4, 2018 - 1:00pm to 3:00pm
Free with Museum Admission
Advance registration is required.

In these free monthly studio sessions, explore painting and mixed-media with guidance from painter Eric Dever. In this session, explore a personal palette within the color spectrum.

Please register online or call 631-283-2118 x130.