Anthony Hawley
Region: West
Every object is another thing’s ghost.
What is of great interest to me is the point at which a thing is both
itself and becoming something else—the object/image wedged
between itself and its ghosts. I am interested in hybridization
as a social, psychological, and political tool. The process of
reimagining what is understood to be concrete, static, or truthful
brings me great joy. My work engages personal and cultural
daydreams, fantasies, myths, desires, and disappointments to
blur the boundary between reality and fiction.
The paintings here are from a large series called Rehearsal
Piece. Each deals with a highly reduced and generalized sense
of the face—a flattened mask or simple set of facial features
disappearing beneath patterns. As a whole, the series is meant
to be a kind of catalogue holding all the possible stories, all the
possible selves and bodies we might perform and get shuffled
through.