Melissa Loop

Region: Midwest

Website: http://www.melissaloop.com

City / State: Minneapolis, MN

In my most recent paintings, I am sourcing images and creating my own language of symbols to make fantastical landscapes and cities that are loosely based around the theme of Utopias. These landscapes act as metaphors for our simulations of natural habitats, social structures, and perfected consumerist environments. Within the fantasy lies a gray area of cultural seduction and exploitation where I can explore my desire, repulsion and contribution to it.

The paintings are highly influenced by the slick, hyper-colored quality of video games, advertising, and Japanese animation. As well, the fantasy worlds created in places such as Dubai, Las Vegas, water parks, and Disneyland become loaded source material that can be appropriated, abstracted, and collaged together. The use of patterns, over-lapping forms, and dripping paint exploits the flatness of the image and negates any illusion in the paintings so that they do not perpetuate the consumerist fantasy, but instead explore its many facets.