Nothing on the surface is what is seems to be. Revealing and masking portions of ourselves is a method of social survival, and this strategy is at the core of my work. My work also emphasizes the tactile quality of paint. I use discarded latex paint that I form into skins as a way to redeem their value.

My studio practice is research-based, primarily drawn from the archive. I consult the documents of pioneering communities in the South Asian diaspora. The history of these communities exists in overlooked materials: books, oral history manuscripts, VHS tapes, records, and cassettes tucked away in cardboard boxes, yellow photographs in peeling albums stuffed in cupboards and shelves, in basements, on online databases, and in the research of scholars who have dedicated their lives to recording a history in the margins.

I begin my work by repeating simple units. I use this repetition and the transformation of units across successive repetitions as a strategy to build larger structures. I work to understand the symbolic potential held by these larger structures and by the relationship of those structures to their constitutive units.

I am interested in how an object’s meaning can embody the unheroic, the anti-vision, and the kitsch, and how this in turn becomes the setting for polysemous propositions. I see glimpses into overlooked and unheroic objects, the “mess-ups,” as potential proper nouns, as sites or heterogeneous co-presences, and as possible exchanges of control, imbalance, repression, and hopelessness. In terms of my process, I think of my surfaces as terrains, armatures, skins, or containers. I seek to make work that inhabits the mind and physically affects the body. Attraction,

Christian Morin is based in Los Angeles and works in painting, graphics, and performance. He formerly worked as a graphic designer and art director at Girl Skateboards and as an artist assistant for Alex Israel. He also co-hosts an independent radio show on KCHUNG called Prodigal Sons.

Brown is the color of warm dirt beneath the feet of children running around the mountaintop village, where people rise earlier than the sun. And, when the sun recedes behind the highest peaks, the brown people blend back into their mud-built homes. Since arriving in the United States, I have felt as if I had been thrown into a meat grinder. During this puzzling journey, in pursuit of the “American Dream,” one either prevails as a new person or becomes hamburger meat. Resiliency is necessary for survival and when participating in the grand tradition of painting.

Lately, my painting practice has been a tennis match between strategy and intuition. It sits at the intersection of deconstructed representation and formal abstraction, and chases ambulances. The narrative is usually sequential, told between paintings, with a recurring cast of characters, forms, and objects that anchor the content to context and move the story forward. Other times, it is like a game of Clue. A whodunit. I just move the puzzle pieces around and wait for the joke to pay off.

Using process as metaphor, Melissa Leandro explores her composite identity and misplaced memories by translating her collages, photograms, and drawings into weaving and embroidery. These fiber techniques slow down the active mark-making of Leandro’s sketches, transforming them into a contemplative reverie. In her jacquard woven pieces, Leandro creates a material topology flattened into a single plane. A sequence of processes creates abstracted imagery that speaks to ideas of translation and our eroding memories. Similarly, through weaving and heatfusing

Reconciling with weight carried by grief, I wonder where to start. It seems there is no beginning to an unknown end. To exist in a state no longer burdened by mourning, I investigate materials from family members I’ve lost. Physical documentation marks moments that are gone. It is a window to the past, veiled by the curtain of time, a construct believed to mark progress. I map these territories as a catalyst for reflection.

Paintings create space for meaning within contradiction, telling truths through falsehoods. I am interested in how a painting can hold opposites in tension without negating either one, how a form can be both positive and negative, a space simultaneously vacant and full.

My recent work borrows from architectural and ornamental forms such as altars, theater sets, and stages—all sites that frame specific actions and actors, suggesting a connection to performativity, whether ritual or theatrical. The possibility of an actor is more compelling to me than the depiction of one.