Artists > Dana De Giulio and Mattthew Girson, Paintings that have the look of paintings that are looked at, September 25th - October 24th, 2026

Paintings that have the look of paintings that are looked at

Dana DeGiulio · Matthew Girson

September 25 – October 24, 2026
Opening reception: Friday, September 25, 5–8pm
2025 W. Belmont Ave, Chicago

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

These are pictures that ask to be approached. A cut-glass vessel holds its light against a wall of drawn flowers, everything drained toward gray. The back of a head turns away, softening at the edges where paint gives up its description.

DeGiulio and Girson work close to silence — grays that carry color inside them, marks that hold and then release. Their surfaces are arrived at rather than negotiated, and they keep the directness of that arrival. Small, unhurried, complete in themselves.

What the two bodies of work share is a proposition about attention: that looking, given time, is its own reward. These paintings return what a viewer brings, and they wait patiently to be brought something.

A STATEMENT, IN TWO VOICES

The paintings in this show are not large or complex. They are not heroic. They have neither bravado nor pomp. They are not remote.
They are immediate and respectful, like a handshake. They call quietly – almost soundless and vibrating – and give patiently. They are generous.

Not speech the wind takes out of our mouths and throws at the curb
with the trash the bus kicks up but a fish mouth opening and closing.

They are not bothered by market trends and artworld politics. They are neither modernist nor postmodernist nor antimodernist. They are neither progressive nor conservative nor neutral.
They are self-contained and invite close inspection. They are aspirational and everything aspirational is always just beginning anew. Declaring them humble would be oxymoronic.

We have to be in time as liquid, it doesn’t flow through, we’re inside of it,
surrounded, it fills our cells; what the work looks like and is can’t ever touch.
A stranger comes to the surface, there is already a nose print on the glass at
adult height blurring the bright edges.

They have less certainty than uncertainty. They are best engaged patiently and with care, leaning forward.
They honor late Polish poet Wysława Szymborska who wrote, “I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.”

In front of Nighthawks there were little kids in bright blue shorts tangled
up all over the floor using the plastic name-tags draped around their necks
with colored yarn as small weapons, nooses, lassoes, little whips, and the
teacher raised her voice to ask What does this remind you of? and then it
was quiet, a fish mouth opened and closed, the net of heaven far above us,
and one kid yelled An aquarium! and they all leaned forward, soundless
and vibrating, and after a moment, half a moment, maybe just a second,
they all screamed and waved their arms like grasses underwater.

The paintings in this show have the look of paintings that are looked at.

Dana DeGiulio
Chicago, August 2026

Matthew Girson
Chicago, August 2026