Richard Deon: Paradox and Conformity September 5, 2010

During the past 20 years, Hudson Valley resident Richard Deon has explored the visual style and methods employed by textbook illustrators from the 1950s. These unsung artists sought to introduce school children to public institutions, history, and politics through the use of easily graspable images and situations. Deon draws on their methods, arranging figures with implicit cultural connotations in situations that mimic the civic and didactic. However, he places viewers in puzzling territory, where the seemingly familiar describes "an uneasy pictorial absurdity." Through aesthetic isolation and dislocation, misidentification and nonsensical juxtapositions, the artist allows conflicting images and ideas to coexist without the hope of resolution. This exhibition includes more than 30 paintings, ranging from monumental banners to easel-sized canvases, as well as small-scaled ink-jet prints from different three graphic series