At first glance, Donald Roller Wilson’s paintings seem akin to paintings of Elvis on black velvet, but it is in this superficial comparison that the paintings mine profound depths of context, theory, and technique.
With the precision and eye of an Old Master painter, Roller Wilson conjures up scenes that seem to continue a lineage of art historical compositions – noble portraits and sumptuous still life paintings. Yet, he populates his works with surreal and unique characters including Cookie the Baby Orangutan, Jane the Pug Girl, Loretta the Actress Cat and more. This tension creates a postmodern understanding of art – the Dutch master-like technique is both the point and beside the point, we are both in on the joke and the subject of it.
Roller Wilson emerged alongside Postmodernism, which burst onto the scene in the 1970s and 1980s. Amorphous and difficult to articulate, Postmodernism upended traditional thoughts of art and design, bringing a winking self-awareness layered in irony to visual culture. The movement reveled in contradictions – luxurious and cheap, practically impractical, a present past. While modernists looked outwards to a brand-new world, postmodernists fractured it.
In Looking For the Virgin in the Woods… the painting sits uneasily among different art historical traditions – Old Master portraits, grand history paintings with hints of Victorian problem pictures. Beautifully painted with impeccable technique, the painting seems at odd with the subjects – a titular mother chimpanzee carrying a dog alongside a child chimpanzee with a phallus on its forehead. Even the overlong and poetic title pushes the painting into beautiful absurdity.
In The Clone, the Fuse, and Sister Dinah Might, Roller Wilson offers up even more surreal absurdity – the juxtaposition of a smoking nun, a suited dog in a baby carriage, a Japanese bomb and fireworks. Her pose references Diego Velazquez’s influential Portrait of Innocent X bringing surrounding objects into sharp focus. Is it a collection of bizarre items or is Roller Wilson making pointed commentary?
The medley of the mundane and extraordinary, nonsensical and rational reflects Roller Wilson’s overall approach. As he once noted, he spends “days and nights pondering the meaning of life, the state of the universe, and the Home Shopping Network. . . . More than anything, my work deals with pointlessness. It takes all the arrogance out of everything you do when you know that God is so much bigger than you are. And yet everything you are and do and see is filled with God: the grass, the asphalt, and the people fighting over Aquanet at Wal-Mart. . . .You can make a profound intellectual statement just by basing your efforts on silliness.”
In this way, Roller Wilson is part of line of artists, like Hans-Peter Feldmann or Raymond Pettibon, that send up art and make us think more critically about visual culture. These artists serve humorous pointlessness undergirded by deep thinking.
Donald Roller Wilson’s work is included in prominent permanent collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Nelson-Atkins Museum and the Brooklyn Museum. His work is also included in several corporate collections, including Bank of America, Frito Lay Corporation and Browning Ferris Corporation. Collectors of note include Jack Nicholson, Elizabeth Taylor and Steve Martin.
