Painting
Jana Benitez
gestural abstract painting re-presenting somatic
sensation and inner perception, exploring our bodies as temples, tuning forks,
and portals into greater wisdom and collective consciousness.
This body of work stems from my fascination with the human body and its relationship to consciousness. I investigate painting’s ability to depict different felt experiences and vibrational frequencies. Worlds within worlds emerge, compressing space and evoking simultaneity. Teetering on the edge of figuration, forms dwell in liminal states of emergence and transformation. Structure and order are in a constant state of breaking down and being re-built, getting swallowed up and rebirthing. A vertical line shoots up the center of the painting, doubling as a spine or axis. Like the keel of a vessel or the eye of a storm, it offers a space for anchoring and orientation. It celebrates our bilateral symmetry and reveals how the structure of our bodies shape how we experience the world. Like a visual mantra, the centerline also functions as a metaphor for staying centered: everything returns to the self, the body and the moment.
This body of work stems from my fascination with the human body and its relationship to consciousness. I investigate painting’s ability to depict different felt experiences and vibrational frequencies. Worlds within worlds emerge, compressing space and evoking simultaneity. Teetering on the edge of figuration, forms dwell in liminal states of emergence and transformation. Structure and order are in a constant state of breaking down and being re-built, getting swallowed up and rebirthing. A vertical line shoots up the center of the painting, doubling as a spine or axis. Like the keel of a vessel or the eye of a storm, it offers a space for anchoring and orientation. It celebrates our bilateral symmetry and reveals how the structure of our bodies shape how we experience the world. Like a visual mantra, the centerline also functions as a metaphor for staying centered: everything returns to the self, the body and the moment.
Painting
Anna Berlin
Astronauts float out
into the universe and heavens, golden frames shimmer, and glittery skies fill
my imagined painted worlds. They are sourced from geographical and celestial
maps as well as Americana imagery. Repeated characters
and repeated worlds function as a form of note taking - a way to take down
information and process things around me. As an outcome they are diaristic;
symbols and characters developed through my own biography. Miniature scenes and figures
shift from charming and cartoon-like to sinister and irreverent. Elements
include sticker clouds and stars, astronauts dying or becoming evil, devils
losing and regaining power from astronauts, and my dog Bailey (RIP) attaining
God-like status. Ideas come from grappling with the news, environmental issues,
feminism, and personal relationships.
I think of the moon and outer space as American Landscapes. The moon because it has an American Flag dug into its surface. Outer space for the desire of American companies, like SpaceX, to build on planets and alter the night sky with satellites. Has outer space become the new American frontier? If we do build on other planets who will have the right of access? The characters in my paintings often look longingly back at Earth, hopefully up into the space above, or purposefully outside the painting's edge to the white wall beside it.
My name often appears boldly written on the surface of my paintings. I’m interested in Anna because of its formal qualities. It’s a palindrome and has only two simple letters and shapes. Berlin is a location - a cool city filled with artists, underground clubs and bars, but also one where my German Jewish family has a complicated history. My name can be seen as a vanitas, an ultimate arrangement of shapes that talk about life and death, but for me it’s a desire to claim ownership and space within the painted object and beyond it.
I think of the moon and outer space as American Landscapes. The moon because it has an American Flag dug into its surface. Outer space for the desire of American companies, like SpaceX, to build on planets and alter the night sky with satellites. Has outer space become the new American frontier? If we do build on other planets who will have the right of access? The characters in my paintings often look longingly back at Earth, hopefully up into the space above, or purposefully outside the painting's edge to the white wall beside it.
My name often appears boldly written on the surface of my paintings. I’m interested in Anna because of its formal qualities. It’s a palindrome and has only two simple letters and shapes. Berlin is a location - a cool city filled with artists, underground clubs and bars, but also one where my German Jewish family has a complicated history. My name can be seen as a vanitas, an ultimate arrangement of shapes that talk about life and death, but for me it’s a desire to claim ownership and space within the painted object and beyond it.
Painting
Liza Clement
The cyclical nature of my practice embodies the paradox
between the enduring, timelessness of art, and ideas of impermanence. It is a
constant negotiation.
My practice embodies states of transition and impermanence and explores the relationship humans have with the natural environment and our desire to control nature. In Darwinian fashion, my fascination with plant and animal ecosystems has to do with the utter sophistication of their functionality. My work deals with the presentation and postulation of the systems that exist in a biological framework and a fabricated one, specifically targeted to reveal the parts of these frameworks that are unseen or not readily revealed to humans. Through the collection and manipulation of these materials, my process entails speeding up certain naturally occurring processes and introducing materials that promote growth. I then utilize plastic, light, and heat to increase or decrease these reactions. They become collections of data reflective of the invisible world. Paintings acting as preservations, records, exaggerations, and reveries are created through observing these collections. They postulate the possibility of hybrid organisms, acting as a framework for interspecies collaborations and an homage to a fascination with ecological phenomena as it progresses in the world’s current Anthropocene state.
My practice embodies states of transition and impermanence and explores the relationship humans have with the natural environment and our desire to control nature. In Darwinian fashion, my fascination with plant and animal ecosystems has to do with the utter sophistication of their functionality. My work deals with the presentation and postulation of the systems that exist in a biological framework and a fabricated one, specifically targeted to reveal the parts of these frameworks that are unseen or not readily revealed to humans. Through the collection and manipulation of these materials, my process entails speeding up certain naturally occurring processes and introducing materials that promote growth. I then utilize plastic, light, and heat to increase or decrease these reactions. They become collections of data reflective of the invisible world. Paintings acting as preservations, records, exaggerations, and reveries are created through observing these collections. They postulate the possibility of hybrid organisms, acting as a framework for interspecies collaborations and an homage to a fascination with ecological phenomena as it progresses in the world’s current Anthropocene state.
Painting
Hana Yilma Godine
The movement of time in spaces and places create
its own novel of time.
As a painter, I pay attention to the commonalities between people and the relationships they have with their environments. I think about painting as a space that mediates time and place, bringing together people from a globalized world, and reconciling the past, present, and future into one unified form. Figures are central to my compositions. Their colorful, transparent, and collaged surfaces suggest embedded histories and embodied feelings. My practice has long focused on women--their bodies, as well as their social and societal roles. I use color in a psychological and symbolic way to describe light as it passes from canvas to canvas and conveys specific moments and times. Working with a spectrum of transparency and opacity, I communicate the sensations of an environment such as atmosphere, air, wind, and speed, all of which evoke the flow and movement of life.
As a painter, I pay attention to the commonalities between people and the relationships they have with their environments. I think about painting as a space that mediates time and place, bringing together people from a globalized world, and reconciling the past, present, and future into one unified form. Figures are central to my compositions. Their colorful, transparent, and collaged surfaces suggest embedded histories and embodied feelings. My practice has long focused on women--their bodies, as well as their social and societal roles. I use color in a psychological and symbolic way to describe light as it passes from canvas to canvas and conveys specific moments and times. Working with a spectrum of transparency and opacity, I communicate the sensations of an environment such as atmosphere, air, wind, and speed, all of which evoke the flow and movement of life.
Painting
Yoav Hainebach
I work on paper using
painting, drawing, and printmaking to explore the space between reference and
its abstraction. Using deliberately minimal visual language and mark making, my
work refers to landscape, yet avoids becoming a specific site. The
non-specificity of my landscapes is tangential to issues of diaspora and
displacement—made apparent through the materialization of compression and
linear/non-linear time theories.
The ground the work is situated on, paper, is mobile in and of itself. In this way, the work is literally grounded in mobility. The temporality and economy of paper’s state of being serves my personal drive and constriction, both literally and theoretically. By contending with the history of landscape and place, translation and language, my use of paper in my practice sits comfortably with its reference to the printed word, as well as diaspora and mobility.
The ground the work is situated on, paper, is mobile in and of itself. In this way, the work is literally grounded in mobility. The temporality and economy of paper’s state of being serves my personal drive and constriction, both literally and theoretically. By contending with the history of landscape and place, translation and language, my use of paper in my practice sits comfortably with its reference to the printed word, as well as diaspora and mobility.
