Spotlight Artist

Greg Fadell

Midwest
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Featured in New American Paintings

Artist Statement

The primary medium of this body of work is duct tape (also known as duck tape)—pressure-sensitive adhesive material that historically evolved from strips of cotton duck to the more commonly recognizable scrim-backed tape that we all know today. By using this material, I draw on the tape’s historical lineage with canvas as artist material as well as its cultural and literal plasticity as a “fix-all” material. Notions of scarification and entropy are evident in the scrapes and abrasions that cut into the works’ surfaces, and expose my aesthetic allegiance to skateboarding and my hometown of Detroit. The imposed destruction is surrounded by literalness and allegory. Thus, there are no simple answers to this Lacanian clash between the “real” and the “symbolic,” and I am comfortable in that complexity.

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