Christine Navin

Region: MFA Annual

Graphite is a medium in constant flux, occupying the liminal and the eternal. It is used not only for monochromatic grisaille studies but also as an elemental material in flat layers, as in relief sculpture; I utilize graphite in all my works, but they are not necessarily mere drawings.

The representational images I use are sourced from a wide range of “high” and “low” culture. The twenty-first century cultural market provides a constant stream of fully coded pre-interpreted information. With my gaze fixed on the surface, I pursue meaning. Searching for this meaningful path is a daily activity: identifying symbols and connecting them. Examples of industrial beauty, classical Greek sculpture, and painterly abstraction typify the eternal prophecy of progress and are, at the same time, intrinsically fated. At the 1964 World’s Fair, attended by 51.5 million people, visitors were carried in cars bolted to moving tracks through an animated history of time, from “The Dinosaurs” to “The Future.” A moving sidewalk took families to observe a computerized Pope. I examine cultural sequences as both fact and myth: a vision of a faded hyperrealist world.