What is my work about?
My work is about abstraction’s double function as both an a-historical process and as a recent historical phenomenon. I employ a range of tools to explore the ways in which both functions structure our visual worlds.
Artist Statement
I’ve been working recently in two, related modes congruently.
In one mode, I’ve been painting abstractions onto mirrored surfaces. These paintings co-‐opt their reflected spaces into their hermetic, abstract logic. The resulting conflicts de-‐familiarize the viewer in various ways with his or her own reflected image. In one, there may be a color shift causing the viewer to appear a sickly shade of green for example. In another, the viewers see their selves projected into a kind of atmospheric space, or see only their crotches, etc. As the viewer moves through the reflected space or as the paintings are hung in different locations, these dynamics shift.
In another mode, I’ve been inflating balloons with water inside acrylic boxes. The form of the balloon is in conflict with the form of the sealed box. Paint and/or images printed on the surfaces of the balloons dramatize this conflict. This dynamic also shifts as the balloons deteriorate. Sometimes the balloons fail suddenly and completely, leaving the pieces to stabilize as latex floating atop a pool of increasingly gross water (there is no sterilization process). Others fail slowly and stabilize at equilibrium when the pressure exerted from the sealed box matches the pressure from the expanded latex. In all cases there is a temporal shift from slick to abject.
Both modes inscribe elastic, autonomous spaces with programmatic limits. I aim to map these limits and to frustrate the fixity those limits require to create the closed circuit of abstraction.
CV
EDUCATION
2010 MFA, Yale University, New Haven, CT
2008 BFA, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
SOLO/TWO-‐PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2011
It Is What It Is, Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA
2009
Diptychs, Massimo Audiello Gallery, NY,NY
2008
There’s a Name for This, Transmission Gallery, Richmond, VA
2007
Edifice Rex, Zed, Richmond, VA
GROUP SHOWS
2013
Shrink It, Pink It, Cathouse FUNeral Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Ephemera, Garden Party Arts, Brooklyn, NY
2011
Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant Recipients, Cue Foundation, NY, NY
2010
MFA Thesis Show, Edgewood Gallery, New Haven, CT
Four-‐Twenty, The Pit, New Haven, CT
2009
Platypus Derby, Greene Gallery, New Haven, CT
Stripes and Idaho, Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA
2008 Almost Famous, Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA
Small Claims, Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA
AWARDS
2010 Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant