Upcoming:
+MsBehavior, ArtBridge, New York City. A three person show featuring my work alongside Amy Feldman & Polly Shindler. 526 W. 26th St. On view till June 28th. Recently named number 2 on Saatchi Magazine's Top Ten Show in NYC.
+ Same Same but Different inaugural show at Parallel Art Space. Opens June 1st. 1717 Troutman - Ridgewood. The new exhibition collective I'm part of alongside Jay Gaskill and Fabian G. Tabibian will kick off our project during Bushwick Open Studios.
+Same Same But Different, August 2012, SOIL Gallery, Seattle. Featuring the work of Jay Gaskill, Fabian G. Tabibian, & Amanda Valdez.
+MacDowell Colony Residency Spring 2012.
+The Wassaic Project Summer Festival
+New American Paintings Magazine MFA Edition hitting news stands in
April. Pick up a copy and find me in there.
Fabric, embroidery, paint, sewing machine, and a frame: these ingredients in my current body of work “Fabric Paintings” push for shapes and lines to have an intimate relationship with one another and to the edge of their frame. It’s crucial that the fabric becomes part of the surface; is the support, is equal to the canvas, obtains autonomy structurally, and that it’s not simply collaged on top of the canvas. The fabric is not a mere embellishment, but a sustaining force in the physicality of the whole painting as an object. Combined with paint and embroidery, each different medium operates as an independent entity on the surface.
There are two stories of the body being played out in my practice: the represented and abstracted forms in my paintings as well as the physical process of my body making them. My body is the means to have a creative thought process, often by thinking through my hands as a way to fully embrace the human condition. I can find, explore, understand, communicate, and continue life experiences by using my physical body as an agent to think. Using shapes as stand-ins for the experiences of the body as a physical mass: the fabric and stitches are agents that keep our bodies clothed, protected, shielded, or constrained.
I think about what the body feels: extreme pleasure and pain. There is pain in the pleasure of having intimate physical contact with another. These brief moments are always book ended with being alone, connections are brief and the rip from them or their dissolution is sobering and sad. This often ignites a full relocation of reality, because reality is shifting on us constantly, causing our bodies to respond to our emotional life. In my paintings I can make something whole- it can all be there- the light, the joy, and the seduction, but there is always a lurking moment to see beyond the wholeness, into the anxiety of fragmentation. The paradox of the co-existing pleasure and pain highlights my interest in paradoxes in general, and how they’re productive locations for me to work with. By the body losing containment for example, ridding itself of poison by ejecting it through it’s orphuses, the mouth or anus, the body can then become healthy and whole again. These are ruptures and they happen in many ways. Sexuality is contained within the body until a moment of feral rapture and we spill out. It’s a physical moment and psychic one. I’m thinking about how my experience oscillates between the two, how a feeling comes from the inside out or how it’s effected from the outside in and the skin is the barrier and surface between these.
+MsBehavior, ArtBridge, New York City. A three person show featuring my work alongside Amy Feldman & Polly Shindler. 526 W. 26th St. On view till June 28th. Recently named number 2 on Saatchi Magazine's Top Ten Show in NYC.
+ Same Same but Different inaugural show at Parallel Art Space. Opens June 1st. 1717 Troutman - Ridgewood. The new exhibition collective I'm part of alongside Jay Gaskill and Fabian G. Tabibian will kick off our project during Bushwick Open Studios.
+Same Same But Different, August 2012, SOIL Gallery, Seattle. Featuring the work of Jay Gaskill, Fabian G. Tabibian, & Amanda Valdez.
+MacDowell Colony Residency Spring 2012.
+The Wassaic Project Summer Festival
+New American Paintings Magazine MFA Edition hitting news stands in
April. Pick up a copy and find me in there.
Fabric, embroidery, paint, sewing machine, and a frame: these ingredients in my current body of work “Fabric Paintings” push for shapes and lines to have an intimate relationship with one another and to the edge of their frame. It’s crucial that the fabric becomes part of the surface; is the support, is equal to the canvas, obtains autonomy structurally, and that it’s not simply collaged on top of the canvas. The fabric is not a mere embellishment, but a sustaining force in the physicality of the whole painting as an object. Combined with paint and embroidery, each different medium operates as an independent entity on the surface.
There are two stories of the body being played out in my practice: the represented and abstracted forms in my paintings as well as the physical process of my body making them. My body is the means to have a creative thought process, often by thinking through my hands as a way to fully embrace the human condition. I can find, explore, understand, communicate, and continue life experiences by using my physical body as an agent to think. Using shapes as stand-ins for the experiences of the body as a physical mass: the fabric and stitches are agents that keep our bodies clothed, protected, shielded, or constrained.
I think about what the body feels: extreme pleasure and pain. There is pain in the pleasure of having intimate physical contact with another. These brief moments are always book ended with being alone, connections are brief and the rip from them or their dissolution is sobering and sad. This often ignites a full relocation of reality, because reality is shifting on us constantly, causing our bodies to respond to our emotional life. In my paintings I can make something whole- it can all be there- the light, the joy, and the seduction, but there is always a lurking moment to see beyond the wholeness, into the anxiety of fragmentation. The paradox of the co-existing pleasure and pain highlights my interest in paradoxes in general, and how they’re productive locations for me to work with. By the body losing containment for example, ridding itself of poison by ejecting it through it’s orphuses, the mouth or anus, the body can then become healthy and whole again. These are ruptures and they happen in many ways. Sexuality is contained within the body until a moment of feral rapture and we spill out. It’s a physical moment and psychic one. I’m thinking about how my experience oscillates between the two, how a feeling comes from the inside out or how it’s effected from the outside in and the skin is the barrier and surface between these.
