Painting
Alex Stern
The cross examination of art historical content
and contemporary culture by my personal philosophical perspective yields a
resonance of ideas from varied perspectives. Paintings are a hybrid plane where
psychology and materiality weave a layered composite. Making paintings is a
prayer-like practice, meditating on the unknown known, the unnamable—a
transformative space where the subjective converts to the objective—all while
contributing and participating in a discourse that spans a wider continuum of
time and history. While I approach the work with specific socio-political
questions in mind, my practice includes an openness and freedom to undo or
shift my original intentions. By relinquishing partial control, I allow the
media to inform new and evolving inquiry and, in turn, varied opticality. Self-argument and material-argument work in
unison to reject certainty while arriving at a dynamic yet finished facture. It
is this process, and a disciplined life routine outside of the studio, coupled
with a complex reckoning with personal history, that defines my practice.
