Steve Hough

Region: Midwest

City / State: Grafton, WI

Using materials associated with Light and Space and Finish Fetish movements of the ‘70s, my work seeks to extend the traditions and vocabulary of painting to include 3D transitions of form and flatness as ratios of absence and presence, space and objecthood. In place of brush strokes from mark making, my work uses pristine, single-surface undulations as figurative motifs of transcendence to explore and comment on relationships between simulation and authenticity, ubiquity and uniqueness, and reality and fantasy, toward notions of a contemporary sublime.

The paintings are hand carved and shaped from a single sheet or block of composite polymer, then progressively sanded smooth. They are painted with color shifting automotive paint and other similar industrial coatings to produce a flawless monochrome surface without evidence of manufacture.