Daphne Minkoff’s Façades

Daphne Minkoff’s latest exhibition, “Facades,” at Harris Harvey Gallery, offers an immersive look into Seattle’s evolving urban landscape. Minkoff, a Seattle-based artist with a special appreciation for urban landscapes, documents our longing for security as it succumbs to inevitable change.

Minkoff’s paintings oscillate between hard shadows and low, dull, diffused light, mirroring Seattle’s characteristic lighting. This variance in light and shadow shapes the atmosphere of each scene, blending flat compressed shapes with stark cold contrasts.

Through a process of photo image projection, collage, and paint, Minkoff layers images from printouts of urban decay from her previous projects, intertwining a few of her own memories. This method not only adds artistic depth but also imbues her works with an obfuscated narrative, flattening the past with the present as these condemned buildings await their fate.

Throughout the show, roofs often reflect some of the sky’s color, rendering the buildings ghostly and seemingly on the verge of vanishing. Works like “Facade of Convenience No. 4” and “Belonging” exemplify this effect, with structures blending into the sky. “Facade of Accessibility No. 1” showcases a clash of contrasting colors and values, further obstructing access. Entryways are absent or obscured, and windows, whether flat and lifeless, boarded up, or reflective, tell us about the buildings’ loss of life and depth. As a teacher of drawing and painting portraits, I oppose Shakespeare’s poetic truism: I refuse to compare the windows of buildings to the eyes of a person, thus referring to them as the “windows to the soul” of both buildings and people, primarily to urge everyone to stop drawing the details of the eyes over and over, leaving the surrounding face completely void of description, but if you wished to make this connection yourself between the buildings’ windows and the impenetrable eyes of a person now departed, you might have a very good point. Minkoff’s use of a compressed split complementary and CMY triad palette offers a brief vibrancy that quickly gives way to a flat, confined, and muted visual experience. Despite the initial color burst, the scenes suggest a shallow depth, merely 1 inch deep, contrasting starkly with a more realistic depth of forty feet. The palette, dominated by blockades and warning signs amidst impassable terrain, reinforces the theme of inaccessibility, and loss.

Utilizing the distorted perspective of a wide-angle phone lens, Minkoff captures the essence of individual buildings—once neighborhood stores or family homes. Despite their themes of decay, Minkoff sees beauty within these structures, emphasizing not just their loss but the warmth and life they once sheltered. The images for this show were gathered over years, often with Minkoff stopping spontaneously to photograph buildings that caught her eye, sometimes with her family’s help scouting locations. Due to safety concerns at these sites, painting en plein aire was rarely possible, so she worked from these photos at home.

Once images were curated from her collection, she began each work by covering a stretched rough canvas with a bold base coat from mixes of her palette of cyan, yellow, and magenta-red, limited to this primary three for harmony. However, despite the bright pops of color, overall I felt a sense of color deprivation from the intensely opposing triad and dull neutrals. Opposing the small brights and large neutrals balanced the paintings, but the missing hues could be seen as, in sympathy with the subject, faded or removed.

Minkoff used oil paints, occasionally mixed with medium and marble dust, which gave the paintings a rough texture, and an occasional gritty sparkle. There were moments when the paint would resist and pull away from the collaged spaces, revealing another layer of process narrative that scraped against the idea of harmony. The buildings emerge from – and are obfuscated by – layers of collaged graffiti that reference human activity as far back as cave paintings; humans saying “I was here”.

Each painting has been layered with black and white photo printouts of urban decay and graffiti, thick textured paints and loose, dripping, informal brush strokes, patches of intermixed neutrals and clear pops of color, scratches and scribbles with various colored pencils. Surface activity is high, and suggests many stages of life have occupied these spaces.

Minkoff’s work is laden with symbols of facades, portraying not just physical barriers but emotional and historical layers. These symbols urge viewers to look beyond the surface, contemplating the stories and lives intertwined with the city’s changing face.

Her paintings convey a sense of loss and decay, and each piece is a testament to the complex emotions tied to development, from nostalgia and loss to appreciation for the city’s architectural character.

Drawing from her surroundings and personal experiences, Minkoff’s work is a poignant documentation of Seattle’s fleeting urban scenes. Her artistic process, blending photography and painting, serves as a bridge between fleeting moments and lasting impressions.

“Facades” is Daphne Minkoff’s poetic inquiry into our longing for stability and the inevitability of change. Minkoff encourages a deeper engagement with our urban surroundings, reminding us of the beauty and loss embedded in the city’s ever-changing facades. Apologies for the timing of this note. Like the houses that could disappear in mere moments, this show is only open for 3 more days.