Desiree Holman

Gallery Affiliations: Jessica Silverman Gallery

Region: Pacific Coast

I identify as an artist and amateur anthropologist. Informed by research and observation, projects are produced as thematic series, like chapters in a book. Each chapter investigates the behaviors of various subcultures, often predicated on notions of social norms and connectivity. Collectively, my work is informed by a sense of “otherness” and the existence of alternative viewpoints, as defined by French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas.

My current project investigates everything spacey, including astrology, aliens, auras, harmonic convergence, mysticism, occultism, animal magnetism, and a myriad of other spiritual pseudo-sciences. I am obsessed with the leaps of faith we choose and refuse to make everyday. This new work explores the iconography and aesthetics associated with these realms, treating fringe fantasies as if they were fact. The sensuous works, which consist of gouache and airbrush paint on paper, seem to float above the page. Art, historically, they channel Francisco Goya’s monstrous Saturn, Mark Rothko’s mystical color fields-and Vija Celmins’s starscapes. The imagery moves swiftly and easily between figure and abstraction, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, new and old ages.