Dylan Vandenhoeck

Region: MFA Annual

We understand space—first shallow, then distant—through touch. We rely on the correlation of what something feels like and what it looks like. The process of painting is the same, but more mysterious and basic.

The physical thought process of painting makes it the ideal medium for me to use to confront the phenomenology of experiences that can be seen or felt but not touched: sunspots, afterimages, and entoptic phenomena. I’ve found something existential in entoptic phenomena, which make me consider where and how I locate myself in space as I consider the constructed nature of seemingly immediate perceptions.

The sun illuminates, the sun blinds . . . But it does so brilliantly, because the residual sunspot bruises in vibrant turquoises and quinacridones. For a brief moment, I get a glimpse of my inner capacity to generate color, as the phosphenic glow of my own projected sunspot sits in harmony with the shared light of the sunset, and, weirdly enough, I feel grounded.