November 21 - January 1, 2021
From the gallery:
“At the core of my painting methodology is a commitment to the tradition and history of painting, to understanding the historical dialogue between surface and illusion, the pictorial and the plastic, subject and object. For over two decades I have been investigating, in general, the issue of the mediated representation and, specifically, the problematic relationship between the image and its referent.
In my work, painting subjects (e.g. still-life, landscape, etc.) becomes ‘convention ready-mades’, a foil by which to explore the relationship between neutral image and active concept. Often with irony and humor, I hope to encourage the viewer to recognize the inherent slippage—the subject depicted as subject, and the painting as an artistic conceit as content. “In our new reality, there is always a picture behind the picture.” (J. Baudrillard)
The new body of idiosyncratic images called “Semblances” are a continuation of ideas explored in previous bodies of work (multiples, clones, copies). In this age of virtual and augmented reality, clones, and deep fakes, how do we know what is actually true? It is called Reality T.V. but it was never real to begin with, only invented for the influencer to create more influencers, creating through diminished copies a semblance of reality. Do we believe the doppelganger looks like us, or that we look like it? By contrasting a subject with its semblance we expose all of the metaphysical contradictions of the simulacra. Does the image of a naturalistic squirrel or bird become even more naturalistic in relation to its kitch semblance, or do they reveal that their artifice is equal in its representation? The fidelity of these images calls attention to the complexity of appearances and their capacity, simultaneously, to confirm and dispute what we know to be true. The more we see, the more we learn, the less we know. As a result, a contradictory visual/conceptual cycle emerges. These paintings playfully expose the fact that all images contain the ability to be, simultaneously, both true and false.
“The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth. It is the truth which conceals there is none. The simulacrum is true.” (Jean Baudrillard, “The Precssion of Simulacra, Ecclesiastes)
A copy (painting) is a copy (semblance) that becomes the truth.”
1011 Dragon Street
Dallas, 75207 TX
(214) 855-0779
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