‘I EXIST IN YOU(r… Record Collection)’ Solo SHOW 2024
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“‘I Exist In You’. Fragments, humanity, darkness, empathy, passion, humor, science, spirit, distance, intimacy, humor, adventure, the search for duende and a lifetime of music fandom.”
“Happening in one of my favorite vinyl record shops, I’m taking inspiration from some of my favorite records, my own releases, mythology, life, current events, and the dark corners of life to explore what the phrase ‘I Exist In You’ means. I’m letting the mediums and pieces stay unpredictable, even to me. I’ve been electrified by ‘making stuff’, feeling my way through, similar to making records; having no agenda except gathering up the tools, throwing the paint and following the feeling. How it all plays as a collection of “songs” will be a matter of what ends up feeling right.”
Patrick Michael Dennis
September 2024
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‘Fürst Art Show’ Solo SHOW 2023
“They are so freshly naked, they have no ambition beyond being shared. Being seen. They don’t know any different.”
“I’m being gifted the opportunity to make my very first album all over again. Except the medium is visual and the sounds are all in color. ”
These paintings are the “debut EP”. A debut. A first note. An intentional noise. They are the first “songs” in physical color. They are rough. Stumbling. Raw. Emotional. Searching. Unconcerned with technical acumen but frothing over with energy and desire. They whisper promises. A glint of something. Ghosts, lives, futures, pasts. Of melodies and painful glorious revelations. Of confrontations and final release. Explosions and gentle caresses. Inspirations and surprises. Visions of things percolating since long before noises were ever made on record. A self-created rorschach test for the soul.
“These are the first paintings of mine to be displayed in public. The first pieces to be sold off a wall in a gallery space. They are a promise to myself to share them whatever they are. Maybe there might be more to this “ep”. A hook or two perhaps that are oddly interesting. That might become something wider. Even wilder. Shapes. Characters. Songs. New songs. Old songs. Perhaps, there might be a full “LP” of paintings forming like stars. A glimmer of a vision emerging. A voice. A sound in the paint. Echoes of the untouchable.
This is excitement to me. It is a rush. Remembering the ignorance of rules or of failure. It is the embrace of limitations. In both budget and tools. It is a promising single surrounded now on the walls by the first crop of immature, ambitious experimental “songs”. Songs as images that could eventually make sense. As an album takes shape. As a story emerges.
I hope you’ll give these paintings a “listen”. They might just take me and you somewhere together.”
Patrick Michael Dennis
September 2023
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Patrick Michael Dennis is a Spanish born English-American musician and painter who studied art and literature while working in Manchester England before leaving early for more work, fatherhood and recording contracts. He was a visual artist before rock n roll took him away touring but has continued to act as a creative director alongside the music. He has been a stock boy in a towel mill, a pre-press tech, a sales assistant, a wanna-be comic book artist, a record store clerk, a farm worker, a fast food burrito slinger, a photo director, a record cover designer, a singer, a guitarist, a creative director, a hammer operator, a record producer, a beach bum, a drummer in a van, a cold fusion coder, a bass player, an HTML zombie, an exhausted touring dog, a songwriter, a screen printer, a landscaper, a bandmate, a success, a flop, and a dog sitter. He was a member of bands Truckee Brothers, and Wirepony in the 2000s, The Cages and The Homer Gunns before that, Speedbuggy USA for an album, and has had a solo career alongside all of it. Now, a Hudson Valley resident, he debuted his first ever public exhibition ‘Fürst Art Show’ in September 2023 at Modern Druid Gallery in Nyack featuring work that was created in an effort to finally get himself sober. It worked. “I Exist In You(r … Record Collection)” took place in Autumn 2024, and is the first in an ongoing series exploring the phrase ‘I Exist In You’. It began with a single question. What does that phrase feel like?