Cristi Rinklin

Gallery Affiliations: Steven Zevitas Gallery, Kenise Barnes Fine Art

Region: Northeast

In my paintings, I create elaborately fabricated environments that are under siege by forces of creation and destruction. These works set up a fluid series of oppositions that activate them both visually and conceptually: surface versus depth, tradition versus new media, representation versus abstraction. The seamlessness of layering I employ is a response not only to “screen space,” but also to the great tradition of illusion in painting. As a historical practice, painting has manipulated space and simulated reality for centuries. These predecessors directly inspire how the landscape is depicted in my work. However, here it is no longer a representation of the natural world we inhabit, rather it becomes a subconscious manifestation imposed upon by the artifice of technology. It is my desire to create conditions within these paintings that are both impossible and yet somehow familiar and believable.