DOGS ALLOWED

by Marlene A. Schenk

Dennis Buck's works tell of digital identity and constant availability as a common social expectation. For the site-specific installation Dogs Allowed at the newly inaugurated Wald Residency the artist created works that form identities from blinding color fields and elements such as numbers and letters made out of materials like silicone, mirrored film and soft PVC glue.

Buck directly inscribes his artist identity into the picture itself, without concealing, hinting at or interpreting it.
In several of his work series, they reveal themselves through the permanent repetition of his name, initials, telephone number, or address, thus referring to the vanishing discrepancy between art and life. The levels of meaning thus oscillate between irony and seriousness.

In the paintings exhibited for Dogs Allowed, Buck expands the idea of this work immanence. The word immanence comes from the Latin immanere and can be translated as 'staying in' or 'adhering'.
As he immortalizes his opening and working hours onto the canvas the artist consequently incorporates his business model into his artistic act of production, regardless of his personal identity. In this way, his paintings inevitably resonate with the inextricable relationship between the artist and the art market.

Buck does not paraphrase what is contained in things, which results from his individual and objective way of existence, but uses the canvas as a direct and formal surface of information. This emphasizes the counter-concept of immanence that is transcendence, often used in artistic practice. Dennis Buck does not take up the inherent property of the object, which is therefore not derived by inference or interpretation. Broken down to the actual, the artist presents his sculptural Buck Bags as an extension of his enterprise, by namely inscribing them in his paintings or offering them in alternation to his paintings in the picture. However, looking into the reflective foil of the works, the reflection on one’s own consumer behavior is also revealed.

The artist’s identity formation and his market analysis are particularly disclosed to the viewer in the given situational presentation in the middle of the forest. Through the mirrored film, our view is thrown back to the trees and the immediate surrounding nature which would presuppose an emotive interpretation of Dennis Buck's œuvre - but the opposite occurs, as this reflection rather leads to a consolidation of socially influenced business structures in the presented series of the painter.

The discrepancy between Buck's formal pictorial language and romantic transfiguration is also evident in the strong contrast of the garish use of color, which in its plastic haptics seems almost out of place in the picturesque transfiguration of the woods. They thus reinforce the idea of the work of art as a corporate structure, the reference to purchasable goods and the idealized as well as factual operations within the art world.