Dennis Quillin and Christian Turner: One Wicked Mime

One Wicked Mime brings together recent work by Dennis Quillin and Christian Turner, whose work is connected in its formal presentation and playful sensibility. Quillin is an artist at Art Enables, in Washington DC, and Turner is an artist at Studio Route 29 in New Jersey.

Quillin’s small-scale works on paper are pared down and soft — they feel like relaxed and relaxing renderings of what’s around — a cup, a desk chair, or a butterfly — and perhaps also states of mind — reflection, in between, balance. The artist’s signature crosses the bottom of most pages, a big but delicate formal presence that turns these also toward self-presentation, as though we’re receiving a card or a gentle hello. Lovely to meet! Quillin’s drawings offer just enough for recognition. They feel like slowly whittled treasures, textural and encountered partly by their outlines, like seeing a friend’s silhouette approach on a bright sunny day.

Turner’s sculpture, though it arrives at a connected formal state, appears to be generated in a highly energetic one — balance here is achieved after revision and play: putting things
together and seeing what that’s like, taking them apart . . . then back together again anew. Completion tenuous and found, the journey floaty and open. Turner’s sculptural work comes into being alongside the artist’s wide-ranging and often performative world-building and storytelling. At times, the works are props for, say, welcoming someone home, transferring a brain from one to another, or envisioned as a friend’s new home, garage, or spaceship. One Wicked Mime presents Turner’s monochromes, in which heavily applied color unites the objects beneath, forming a whole whose details are submerged. Form moves to the fore here, and the energy of the artist’s process finds placidity and a moment of calm.

Banner artwork: Figure with Head Tilted, Dennis Quillin, 2022; and Untitled, Christian Turner, 2025