“De/Con/Struct”
2009
Mixed media on canvas
24″ x 36″
“Pile of Homes”
2009
Mixed media
4′ x 5′ x 4′
“The New”
2008
Mixed media on canvas
36″ x 48″
Artist Statement
What appears simple just demands a different kind of patience than what is scraggly and complex.
Website
http://malinabrahamsson.com
Palm Springs 6, acrylic and aquarelle on panel, 34×60
Palm Springs 5, acrylic and aquarelle on panel, 34×48
Retreat, acrylic and aquarelle on panel, 34×28
Artist Statement
My recent work investigates the shadows of the American middle-class landscape. I locate surface qualities that both seduce and haunt, simultaneously evoking my own middle-class desires and a recognition of the feebleness of those desires: things coming and going. A vantage point. Translating those surface qualities becomes a way to work through the tensions within my creative life; I want both beauty and grit, just as, perhaps, I want aspects of the suburban dream as well as the right to criticize it.
By following the areas of seduction- palm trees against a pink sky, the sweep of a smooth concrete driveway– the contradictions of suburban desires present themselves. The darker, less-defined areas mark an entrance into the real domestic life of the place. Ideas and longings flicker and disappear. A walkway leading to a house, possibly a home, is barely visible in the darkness of night – or obscured by memory itself. The empty spaces hold something.
Contact
www.meganberk.com
meganberk@hotmail.com
Tags: Photography · Sculpture
Berlin Faces (triptych)
2008, oil on panel, 40 x 22 inches
Book of Days
2008, oil on panel, 12 x 12 inches
Wood, Stone, Bone
2004-5, oil on panel, four 1 x 10 inch panels
Artist Statement
My work has been greatly influenced by urban environments. I respond to the architecture of a place as it bears its own history, of its time and place when constructed. A building is also the witness of subsequent periods from those who have lived their lives within to those who have briefly passed through its walls. For me, though inorganic, buildings contain remnants of a human touch.
Though based in New York City, I also gather much of my imagery from my travels. In fact, bits and pieces of places I have seen are deconstructed and reconfigured in seamlessly assembled compositions. Objects, images, architectural details are placed within a newly invented context, as I seek to transform even the mundane into the strange and intriguing.
The juxtaposition of flat planes of saturated color with these finely painted details more clearly defines the abstract nature of the paintings while simultaneously emphasizing the evocativeness of the imagery. The trompe I’oeil images become more than mere depictions of reality, with the shapes of pure color a reminder of the identity of the painted surface.
I have been dealing with the ideas of multi-panels for a number of years. With its sequential aspect, spaces fluctuate between the surface and glimpses behind it. Ambiguity is further created through unusual combinations of perspectives, mixtures of light sources, and unsettling color choices. By using the relatively small scale, I can draw the viewer into a minute representation of a world that offers reality with a twist. This invites an intimate, thought provoking relationship between participant and the work. It is an immersion in spaces that are uninhabited, uninhabitable, a discovery of the unexpected. One’s sense of order and proportion is challenged, as the implied presence of human life coupled with the subtly disturbing images evokes an uneasy response and re-evaluation in the viewer, who begins to realize that things are not what they seem.
Website
http://www.maddyrosenberg.net/
Tags: Painting