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"\u201CIf you were sending a letter to Matthias&amp;nbsp;Weischer, and this letter was a painting, what would you want to say?\u201D Damian Stamer, a 29-year-old painter from North Carolina, mused. We\u2019d been standing in front of a completely blank canvas in his studio at the University of North Carolina, where he\u2019s pursuing an MFA. It was January. Within three short months, he had to turn the canvas into one of the centerpieces of his first solo show in New York, opening at Freight + Volume on April 12. The exhibition marks his highest-profile outing yet, following several group shows, booths at Pulse Miami and New York, and a solo show at Mill Fine Art, in Santa Fe.Weischer and other contemporary European figurative painters, such as Micha\u00EBl Borremans and Neo Rauch, are never far from Stamer\u2019s mind. He regards them as \u201Cpainters\u2019 painters\u201D who are \u201Cinterested in the overall tradition of painting, along with the current conversation.\u201D Stamer\u2019s greatest aspiration is to enter this conversation and, during the past several years, he has created a body of work with which he hopes to achieve that goal.In 2005, while studying at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden K\u00FCnste (State Academy of Art and Design) in Stuttgart, Germany, Stamer became fixated on the influential European painters who have come to play an important role in his work\u2019s development. Since then, he\u2019s been engaged in a one-way dialogue with them\u2014responding to their work through his own, without the ability to address them directly. The process forms part of his daily practice. On a table in the corner of his studio, he keeps a dozen or so art books opened to pictures of paintings by Rauch, Borremans, Anselm Kiefer, and others. As he works, he sometimes moves between a wet canvas and the books, consulting them. Recently, before he painted some wood planks, he stood over the table and asked himself: How would Weischer have done this?Since beginning to focus on these artists, Stamer has developed a robust painterly language of his own. The first step came in 2006 when he painted Heal, an energetic composite of disparate figurative elements\u2014from a snow-covered landscape to a tightly rendered urn\u2014stitched together by broad gestural brushstrokes in pinks and purples. Heal\u2019s combination of figuration and abstraction laid the groundwork for his more recent efforts, and Stamer now regards the painting as an important \u201Cbreakthrough\u201D piece.Two years later, he built on Heal\u2019s foundation by adding a spatial component. In Szolnok, 2008, he placed a house and a hyper-realistic apple amid a field of abstraction. The abstract sections include geometric forms such as boxes and planes. The contours of these objects, as well as the lines describing the house, recede to a single vanishing point, drawing the viewer\u2019s eye to a horizon that is lost behind drips and slathers of paint. Despite the fact that abstract brushwork covers most of the painting, a sense of space prevails.Stamer has brought together the concerns he explored in these two \u201Cstepping-stone\u201D paintings, as the artist himself characterizes them, in a group of works that has occupied him since 2009. In his \u201CSouth Lowell\u201D series, Stamer interprets scenes from the North Carolina countryside where he grew up, testing the limits of how he can represent space.He begins some of these paintings, such as Haymaker, 2010, by freely applying thick brushstrokes without a view to a final composition. He builds up the abstraction until a sense of space suggests itself to him and then he \u201Ccarves out\u201D a landscape, as in Haymaker\u2019s expansive field bisected by a row of hay bales. Although the borders of the figurative scene melt seamlessly into the surrounding abstraction, the center is naturalistic and carefully executed.In other \u201CSouth Lowell\u201D paintings, he works directly from photographs, creating a realistic landscape and then adding an abstract intervention, such as the red swath of thick brushstrokes that looms over a shed in Toler\u2019s Fence, 2010.Stamer feels that it\u2019s natural to integrate these kinds of abstract and figurative elements. In fact, he sees them as indistinguishable in some ways. He argues that the red swath occupies physical space just as the shed does: If you could enter the painting, you could walk around it. The two elements are also painted using the same technique. \u201CLook,\u201D he says, pulling up a digital photo of the painting on his computer and zooming in on the shed. \u201CThese are just two strokes,\u201D he explains, gesturing to demonstrate how he painted the roof and a wall with one quick brushstroke each.In some of Stamer\u2019s most recent works, the dichotomy between abstraction and figuration has broken down even further: Forms emerge from gestural brushstrokes that, isolated, could be transplanted to an Abstract Expressionist canvas.In a work tentatively titled Trespass, 2012, he allowed the edge of a tightly painted stove to drip toward the bottom of the canvas; he rendered some barely identifiable paint cans with a few quick strokes; and when he needed to balance out the blue contour of an object in the center of the painting, he simply dripped some powder-blue paint into a corner of the canvas. Standing back from the finished work in his studio, he told me, \u201CIt might be one of the best paintings I\u2019ve done.\u201DStamer feels that with the \u201CSouth Lowell\u201D series, he has found his voice. Now, after years of listening intently to those of other painters, he wants his own to be heard.\u201CI saw the Borremans show,\u201D Stamer says, referring to the artist\u2019s recent exhibition at David Zwirner gallery, in New York. \u201CIt would be interesting if he knew who I was. I know how much energy and pleasure it gives me to look at and admire someone\u2019s paintings, and it would be nice to be in the conversation with these people.\u201DHe\u2019s \u201Cnot expecting that to happen overnight,\u201D he\u2019s careful to point out, but he feels that his upcoming solo exhibition might be a first step toward that goal. \u201CIt\u2019s a way to talk to a lot of artists,\u201D he explains, before adding, \u201CHopefully that blank canvas I\u2019ve got turns into a good conversation starter.\u201DClick on the slide show to see work by Damian Stamer.This article appeared in the April issue of Modern Painters magazine. [content:advertisement-center]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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