Duane Slick: “There Are No Endings”

Santa Fe- As part of Chiaroscuro’s Annual Contemporary Native American exhibitions we pleased to present our featured solo exhibition of new paintings and prints from Duane Slick (Meskwaki/Ho-Chunk Nations) titled There Are No Endings. The exhibition is on view from August 12 through September 10 in the main downstairs gallery at 558 Canyon Road. Please join us for the artist’s opening reception on the Friday of Indian Market weekend, August 19 from 5-7pm. Exhibition is on view starting Friday, August 12.

Duane Slick’s narrative abstraction is direct and personal. The paintings slowly and clearly speak to deeply ingrained Native American storytelling. Combining geometric abstraction and representative images of coyote heads, corn and wheat stalks, rabbits and birds, the work connects not to the specific figures, but to a state of mind, a direct connection to something larger than us. This connection is strongly sensed and felt in Slick’s most recent body of work, There Are No Endings, which consists of 26 paintings both small and large scale. The exhibition is drawn from Slick’s most recent solo museum show, The Coyote Makes the Sunset Better, presented in early 2022 at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield CT.

This is Chiaroscuro’s first solo exhibition for Duane Slick though we have presented his work since 2019 in numerous group shows. Slick’s connection to Santa Fe goes back to his teaching at Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in the late 1990’s, early 2000’s, and exhibiting in Santa Fe at that time. Currently, Slick is a Professor of Painting and Printmaking at Rhode Island School of Design since 2005.

“There Are No Endings,” Acrylic on linen, 18x 60 inches