2008

Conversation, David Ellis’s installation at Rice Gallery, is a booming, rocking mix of improvisational painting, sculpture and rhythm. Early in his career, beat and rhythm were unspoken components of Ellis’s work. As a painter his goal was to make the rhythm that he heard in his head visible to the viewer. His next step was to incorporate beat directly into his work. He explored this idea in a series of “drum paintings,” rhythmic installations that combine painting, sculpture, and beat. Conversation, his most ambitious drum painting to date, continues the evolution of his work, making beat not only audible, but also visible.

Conversation’s focus is the dialogue of two grouse, animalistic hybrids based on animals familiar to Ellis from his childhood. The grouses’ conversation adds to the installation’s sound, a driving and complex polyrhythmic composition produced by beaters pounding out beats on oil drums, paint cans, plastic buckets, and the grouse. A smoke-shaped cloud, in hues of fire-reds and cool greens, forms a grouse face on the oil drums, and then snakes around the gallery walls, finally pooling in the middle of the front glass. This tour de force painting picks up the beat and visually completes Ellis’s exuberant installation.

VIDEO of Installation at Rice Gallery.