
Spotlight Artist
Matthew J. Penkala
Pacific Coast
Artist Statement
I construct paintings as a place of interactivity in order to examine the dynamic potential of a static object. The paintings involve cultural elements and digital representations taken from online sources. I conflate these elements on a computer, resulting in a visual construct that is then reintroduced as its own object/condition through various painting languages and techniques. This object introduces a set of fluctuating conditions that present it as a dynamic event based in the qualitative realm of real-time perception. The use of dispersed particles of airbrushed paint creates an analogy to pixels and bits of information that represent contemporary reality. As a result, I tie a reality constructed from representations and the virtual world of pictorial illusion with the physical interactive space created by the painting’s materials and hypnotic quality. This positioning within the painting vernacular constitutes and challenges the intimate relation between vision and intellect, abstraction and representation, as well as the authentic and artifice.
Artist's Additional works
Works shared by the artist outside of their featured New American Paintings selections


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