John DiPaolo: Four Decades of Painting

John DiPaolo’s abstract paintings roil with an inexhaustible energy. Underpinned by a shape-shifting kaleidoscopic dynamism, they offer up configurations of form, color and movement that crystalize and tremble before sinking swiftly back into the composition. And while the paintings draw much of their vitality from this perpetual imminence, the unwavering soundness with which the DiPaolo knits these cycles of formation and re-formation imparts the work with a sense of solidity and monumentality. As objects harboring equal parts spirit and strength they have the power to both profoundly move and fortify those who approach with unfettered eyes. Such visceral effects are not incidental but rather directly precipitated by DiPaolo’s remarkable understanding of what painting is what painting is meant to achieve. It is therefore unsurprising to learn that, for the last 40 years, John DiPaolo has pushed the limits of abstraction to make art that “says and does something,” rather than art that caters to the styles most common presuppositions.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.