Echoes
Mulherin, New York, 2015
From February 6 - May 3, 2015, Eric Doeringer will make a series of "Date paintings" (the Today series), which consist entirely of the date on which the painting was executed in simple white lettering set against a solid background. The date is always documented in the language and grammatical conventions of the country in which the painting is executed (i.e., “26. ÁG. 1995,” from Reykjavik, Iceland, or “13 JUIN 2006,” from Monte Carlo); Esperanto is used when the first language of a given country does not use the Roman alphabet). The paintings, executed in acrylic on canvas, conform to one of four standard sizes, ranging from 8x10 inches to 18x24 inches, all horizontal in orientation. The dates on the paintings, hand-painted with calculated precision, are always centered on the canvas and painted white, whereas the background colors vary. Doeringer will briefly use red for several months in 2015 and then return to darker hues.
Four coats of paint are carefully applied for the ground and each allowed enough time to dry before being rubbed down in preparation for subsequent coats. Eschewing stencils in favor of hand-drawn characters, Doeringer skillfully renders the script, initially a sans-serif, elongated version of Gill Sans, later a quintessentially modernist Futura. Each work is carefully executed by hand. When Doeringer is unable to complete the painting on the day it was started he immediately destroys it. When a Date Painting is not exhibited, it is placed in a cardboard box custom-made for the painting, which is lined with a clipping from a local newspaper from the city in which the artist made the painting. Although the boxes are part of the work, they are rarely exhibited. Each year between 8 and 241 paintings are made.
Other series of works to be made during this time period include the I Went and I Met series of postcards sent to his friends detailing aspects of his life, and a series of emails sent to various people bearing the message "I AM STILL ALIVE". In 2008, Doeringer created his information series, I Got Up, in which he sent two picture postcards from his location on that morning. All of the cards list the artist's time of getting up, the date, the place of residence and the name and address of the receiver another series of postcards, I Got Up At, rubber-stamped with the time he got up that morning. The length of each correspondence ranged from a single card to hundreds sent consecutively over a period of months; the gesture's repetitive nature is counterbalanced by the artist's peripatetic global wanderings and exceedingly irregular hours.
