Spotlight Artist

Melissa Furness

West
Artist profile photo
Featured in New American Paintings

Artist Statement

There is a paradox that emerge when we are confronted with ruins. Our thinking splits into two paths—one that leads backward in time and another that travels forward, paths that are wandered on simultaneously. The result is the creation of a complex alternative present. We are pointed toward a distorted world in which even what is now new will outlive us in some form of odd decay for other generations to translate.

These fragments are leftovers of a public history, which we then make personal through contemporary experience. They are sites from which life has departed, though the discourse surrounding their former occupation remains.

My work explores the life of the art object and the environment it inhabits, building a visual dialogue that extends from the internal to the external by testing the limits of the narrative that exists within and beyond it, through process and intervention. Artifacts are created and eroded as weather, time, and human interaction raise questions regarding the nature of external forces on the object in the formation of its present history.

Artist's Additional works

Works shared by the artist outside of their featured New American Paintings selections

Featured artwork
Featured artwork

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