BOOKS AND CATALOGS
New Rules Next Week, Corita Kent’s Legacy through the Eyes of Twenty Artists and Writers
Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2023. Eric Dever essay pp 77-80, excerpt:
"Corita collaborated with and quoted many artists. My personal favorites include poets, writers, and playwrights such as Joseph Pintauro, Daniel Berrigan, and e.e. cummings. Today, it comes as no surprise to me that Corita highlights John Cage in the final rule: 'We’re breaking all of the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.' —John Cage
New Rules Next Week available at MoMA and the Corita Center bookstores.
Eric Dever: Warhol Montauk Project
MagCloud, New York, 2021
A catalog of 17 important paintings Dever produced as part of his residency project at the Warhol Foundation/Nature Conservancy, a 15-acre preserved oceanfront in Montauk, New York's easternmost tip. Midpoint through the project, Dever turned his attention from Amsterdam Beach to the greater Montauk area, inspired by a brochure distributed at the Montauk Lighthouse, The Explorer’s Club, published in the 1950s, highlighting historical sites important to the Montauketts and the people of Eastern Long Island. Also included is a Q&A with Marianela Jiminez and an essay by Berry Campbell, New York.
MagCloud, New York, 2020
13 mixed media works, painting and collage by Eric Dever, who finds meaning and inspiration in each line of this mesmerizing poem by Emily Dickenson.
Eric Dever: Light, Energy and Matter
MagCloud, Los Angeles, 2017
A 60 page exhibition catalog of 45 paintings which brings the viewer on a journey, similar to the path of the artist himself.
“Overtime, I began to develop a sense of mixing qualities of light, energy and matter, as one would mix color or hue. Some paintings feel heavy or contained, while others are explosive or very light, though each work is related and part of a whole.”
This approach embraces Dever’s interest in color’s shifting correspondence with light (white), energy (red), and matter (black). These color phenomena also echo Dever’s studies of material nature, and the gunas, subtle qualities woven together that underlie all of existence as presented in Samkhya philosophy, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita (14.5):
Clarity, passion, dark inertia. These are qualities that originate from nature.
Clarity, Passion and Dark Inertia: Paintings by Eric Dever
MagCloud, New York, 2015
A 44 page exhibition catalog including reproductions of 29 paintings and 2 installation views, presented by New York University, Kimmel Galleries.
A decade long process, Dever limited his palette for 4 years to white alone and uncovered a white spectrum ranging from opacity to translucency. He then introduced black, working through grayscales, and in 2010 began testing a variety of prepared red hues and arrived at Napthol Scarlet, discovering a surprising range and quantity of tones, all from red, black, and white alone.
This approach embraces Dever’s interest in color’s shifting correspondence with matter (black), energy (red), and light (white). These color phenomena also echo Dever’s studies of material nature as presented in Samkhya philosophy, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and in the Bhagavad Gita.