Shana Kaplow

Region: Midwest

Website: http://www.shanakaplow.com

City / State: St. Paul, MN

My work explores the psychological inferences held within the bodies and spaces we inhabit.

Restless and shifting worlds seem most truthful to me. How do we connect to each other, to the body politic, or to the larger world? How do we relate within and to surrounding environments?

I spent a month last year living in the unfamiliar surroundings of Beijing. It was exhilarating, because it forced to the surface my impulses of desire, separation, and, ultimately, connection. My work is a way of redefining how I experience what is near or far, what is intimate or separate. In these paintings, I am thinking about how to unmoor concepts of “close” and “home,” how they can be occupied both intimately and from a distance. I like this kind of stretching and conflating—it makes the world feel like a continuum.