Devan Shimoyama
Region: MFA Annual
The figures in my work find themselves echoed throughout the
paintings, attempting to connect, but failing to join and fulfill their
sensual desires. Tender moments of touch are often displayed
and repeated within these dreamscapes of skewed spatial
perspectives and oddly vacant domestic rooms. With the tactility
of thickly poured and splattered paint and the effervescence of
luminously sprayed stencils, silhouettes of figures burst with
divine ecstasy, often sensually interacting with other figures from
a different realm. The emphasis on the figures’ faces and genitals,
rendered using traditional portrait drawing techniques, evokes
a personal void: the absence of a distant lover’s warmth or even
the intimacy of self-searching touch. The figures are stripped,
dauntless, and brazenly inviting. They are wholly magical and
universally human.