For Real Life

Catharine Clark Gallery

May 11 - July 6, 2024

Part 1: For Real Life statement 

It all started as a singularity. 1:1 ratio. Observation. Focus intended to quiet my mind as the world swirled around filled with discovery, joy, distraction, uncertainty. One thing at a time. One mark, then another. One thing conversing with the other. Jokes formed, thoughts born. Associations made. Confused with information overwhelm. Long dives down rabbit holes—realizing the insistent longevity of paint on cloth, print on page; the omnipresent speed and quick obsolescence of the digital artifact. It floods and retreats. Ebbs and flows of meaning, connection, desires, importance. Here. Gone. Discovered again. Or not. Through it all is family. Friends. The home. Work. Life. Death. War. Unrest. Resolve. Continuities. It began simply enough. Nothing is singular. For real life.

Gleaner, Installation and details

Part 2: For Real Life exhibition description

For Real Life contains paintings, drawings and sculptures that depict personal and mass-produced objects made unique through their idiosyncratic wear and tear. I focus on how these common objects act as markers of time and place while also conjuring personal histories, collective desires and cultural phenomena. I gravitate towards items that bridge connections and disseminate information, from traditional formats like books and records to ever-evolving digital artifacts like QR codes. The works range from depicting singular objects to more layered compositions of mark-making, images and ephemera. 

The act of recording is central to my practice. It is my attempt to slow the inevitable march of time through mindful observation and patient rendering contrasted with the random aesthetics of “rabbit hole” research. While composing a painting or drawing, I consider what is permanent and whether that is ever possible—from paint on a surface, to words on a page; from sound waves etched into vinyl, to data encoded in silica. All of these devices, like my work, reach for enduring connections. 

The selected seven graphite drawings in For Real Life are from a larger body of work made over forty drawings completed in the past three and a half years (2021-2024). Amid the complexities of parenthood, remote work and pandemic domesticity, mindful observation and rendering of objects became my meditative practice (indebted to the Deep Listening practice of Pauline Oliveros). The drawings are rendered in 1:1 scale to honor the presence and collected “life” of an object. With the exception of the ghost shadow of a monarch (Milkweed), the subjects of the drawings were culled from my immediate surroundings  and rendered from direct observation: the head of a guitar broken by my child (Farewell Grover), CDs (Deep Listening), printouts (Badu and Amended Guidelines), burnt matches (Mood), and collected fallen leaves (Sycamore Leaves). These drawings led to the paintings and sculptures in the exhibition. 

Some paintings focus on a single object or image, as with One and Done, a depiction of the surgical table following my vasectomy in 2023 — a personal decision that affects my family that also alludes to larger discussion around reproductive rights. Other paintings are anchored by one object that developed resonance as additional objects coalesce into layered compositions. The painting, Walking in Your Footsteps, began with repeated listening to the 1971 album “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye which informed making ecology the functioning topic for the painting. 

In paintings like An other St art A gain, three dimensional objects incorporated into the paintings—found and polychromatic painted wood carvings—further complicates the illusionistic read of the work. Sculptural elements prolong the double take found in trompe l’oeil. Hand painted QR codes, such as in the painting Let Love In, interlink eras of technologies, blending the handmade with video or other digital artifacts. In Gleaners, living elements like plants are included to promote a sense of caretaking and responsibility, while devices such as shelves play with painting tropes and present a painting as a functional, domestic object. The painting For Real Life depicts the domestic space directly: the doorway to our child’s room cluttered with artworks, postcards and other personal ephemera.

Through this new work I embraced chance and happenstance, resting somewhere between allegory and random threads of information knotted together. As a parent, this mirrors my ongoing collaboration with our child as they develop their understanding of the world around them, generating their own conclusions, collections and artworks, which in turn find their way into my paintings and drawings.

This exhibition developed as I moved between roles of artist, father, husband, professor, mentor, mentee, friend, and citizen. It is informed by our child’s exuberant observations, uninhibited mark making, and eye-opening imagination. The work also contains moments of processing the loss of my mentor and friend Hung Liu. I am grateful for my students and all I learn from them, with a special thanks to Samantha Graham for her custom ceramic contributions to this show. 

Installation at Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco