Even as works by both Tom Dash and Graham Gillmore at Mark Borghi Fine Art in Bridgehampton could be seen as channeling the impulses of Pop Art, each artist approaches the milieu from a dramatically different perspective.

Pop Art is often seen as merely the regurgitation of commercial imagery, or creativity repackaged as an extension of Madison Avenue hucksterism. But as it was first envisioned by a gathering of artists in Great Britain in 1952, the earliest Pop Art arose as a vehicle for the creative community to liberate itself from the stultifying restrictions wrought by both museums and art schools.

Calling themselves the Independent Group and welcoming painters, sculptors, and designers, they welcomed the inclusion of mass culture as a legitimate expression of contemporary aesthetics and sought to erase the boundaries between “high” and “low” art.

Tom Dash’s mixed media works at Borghi’s Bridgehampton site reflect what are probably the more familiar trappings of Pop Art, as embodied by Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist--and, more recently, Richard Prince, for whom Dash worked--in their use of appropriated imagery and their celebration of everyday objects.

These echoes are particularly notable in Untitled (mixed media on canvas, 2015). The work pays homage to Jasper Johns’s seminal 1954 work Flag in its configuration, but takes off in interestingly ironic directions by including repeated images of Kate Moss as the bars of the banner and appropriated copies of Warhol’s famous “Flower” works from the mid-1960s as the stars.

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"Untitled" by Tom Dash, 2015. Acrylic with collage on canvas.

"Untitled" by Tom Dash, 2015. Acrylic with collage on canvas.

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The influence of Jasper Johns, specifically his painting Racing Thoughts from 1983, appears in another Dash work titled Lady Luck (acrylic and collage on canvas, 2013), in which the artist opens the picture plane and creates a painterly ground on which he superimposes racing stickers that seem to float in indeterminate planes within the negative space.

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"Lady Luck" by Tom Dash. Acrylic and collage on canvas.

"Lady Luck" by Tom Dash. Acrylic and collage on canvas.

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Lady Luck has a less structured sensibility than many of the works in the exhibit and hints at elements of playfulness, particularly in the artist’s use of some googly-eyed stickers that call to mind aspects of similar motifs associated with the painter Kenny Scharf.

The other works by Dash on view also use automotive motifs, although their sensibility more closely corresponds to the juxtapositional screen print works made famous by Robert Rauschenberg. This is exceptionally apparent in works such as Untitled (mixed media on canvas, 2015) in which the lower quadrant of the canvas is occupied by a circa 1970 grand prix-style racing car, while above it the artist floats collage elements that seem to fade to meet the rising horizon in the distance.

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"Untitled" by Tom Dash, 2015. Mixed media on canvas.

"Untitled" by Tom Dash, 2015. Mixed media on canvas.

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Stylistically, this auto theme fits perfectly within the whole Pop Art sensibility for a number of reasons, not least being the associated aura of modernity and technology that the automobile represents to the 20th century. This association has been a singular touchstone throughout the evolution of modern art itself, and was even featured in the 1909 manifesto of the Italian Futurists: “The world 's splendor has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile, its hood adorned with great pipes like snakes with explosive breath … a roaring automobile, which seems to run like a machine gun is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

If Dash’s work can be seen as arising directly from precedents established by  prior Pop artists, Graham Gillmore’s paintings can be viewed as belonging to a more post-painterly offshoot of the genre. Using text as a substitute for what the artist considered the confines of traditional representational imagery, Gillmore is able to construct compositions that are playful both in their message and in their planar organization, yet still elicit a sense of conventional aesthetic appreciation in the interaction of shapes and colors.

These components are used to great effect in both Rejection Letter (acrylic with collage on paper mounted to canvas, 2009) and Untitled (With Your Best Interest at Heart) (framed acrylic on paper, 2009) in which the letters themselves adopt interestingly complex configurations even as the act of “reading” the work becomes a singularly entertaining part of the process.

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"Rejection Letter" by Graham Gillmore, 2009. Acrylic with collage on paper mounted on canvas.

"Rejection Letter" by Graham Gillmore, 2009. Acrylic with collage on paper mounted on canvas.

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"Rejection Letter" by Graham Gillmore, 2009.Framed acrylic on paper.

"Rejection Letter" by Graham Gillmore, 2009.Framed acrylic on paper.

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In other works, such as Passed Port (oil on enamel on wood panel, 2011) or Writ (acrylic with collage on paper mounted to canvas, 2014), Mr. Gillmore’s use of written phrases becomes more of a complementary component among other painterly elements, while also serving to open the compositional framework considerably.

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"Passed Port" by Graham Gillmore, 2011. Oil on enamel on wood panel.

"Passed Port" by Graham Gillmore, 2011. Oil on enamel on wood panel.

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"Writ" by Graham Gillmore, 2004. Acrylic with collage on paper mounted to canvas.

"Writ" by Graham Gillmore, 2004. Acrylic with collage on paper mounted to canvas.

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This effect is further accentuated by the use of techniques that involve incised areas of the surface of the works, imparting a topographical sensation and promoting an even greater sense of depth as well as implied perspective.

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BASIC FACTS: Works by Tom Dash and Graham Gillmore remain on view through mid-December 2015. Mark Borghi Fine Art is located at 2426 Main Street, Bridgehampton, NY 11932. 631-537-7245; www.borghi.org.

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