TExt

artist


Darren Orange

“Orange is probing the quicksand with a steel pole.  He will never hit bottom, and he knows it.  His preference for earth tones and found media anchors him in the slimy muck-fuck of pollutive decay, far from the gleam and buff of our fashionable post-minimalism.  No doubt, his sophisticated technique, which revels in surface effects, would yield more emphatic results in bolder hues and cleaner materials, but Orange isn’t interested in immaculate exclamation points; he prefers the fatalistic ellipsis.  This is not Ellsworth Kelly- this is the corpse of Ed Kienholz rising from the grave to impregnate Lucida Parker, conceiving an unholy spawn that is far from pretty, yet somehow perversely brilliant.” 


Richard Speer

Williamette Weekly

April 7 2004