Haptic Image

I am happy announce my inclusion in the upcoming exhibition "Haptic Image" at Waiting Room in
Minneapolis. The exhibition also features work by Katelyn Farstad, Grace Marie Keaton and Justin Quinn.
Waiting Room is a project founded and directed by Jehra Patrick.

Opening: Friday, Feb. 6, 7 - 10 PM
1629 Hennepin Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55403

http://www.waitingroomart.org/

From the Announcement:
Waiting Room is pleased to announce Haptic Image, a group exhibition of recent work by Hartmut Austen, Katelyn Farstad, GraceMarie Keaton, and Justin Quinn. Curated by Jehra Patrick, Haptic Image gathers together photographic prints, drawings, collage, assemblage, and paintings, to demonstrate possibilities for mark-making through material.
 
Each of these artists maintains a traditional studio practice: a physical site for the contemplation, production, and iteration of images-as-objects. All embrace the tactility of their materials, operate as interveners on surface, and leave traces – brushwork, folds, creases, clipped edges, globs – of their hands' interactions with their objects. Their surfaces, even if built up or incised upon, are to be viewed head-on. All commit to a rectangular frame, either through paint on stretched canvas or by forms which proximate painting.
 
While material drives process, each of the artists begin with a found image or object, often historical or cast-off. They then work to obliterate, transform, mask, scale, fragment, build, and re-constitute their source-subject until a new image amalgamate is born. ‘Image' is the operative word - any traces of the pictorial are circumstantial; the works are now abstractions, stylizations, reductions, counterparts, and recursions. Even-handed touch affirms the image-ness of these pieces. Nothing singular is depicted, given focus, or hierarchy, which provides room for multiple entry points, readings, associations, and histories.
 
This combination of process, technique and uniform application results in an all-over touching, as well as evidence of decision-making – like residual finger traces on an iPad screen. No coincidence, this language of touching – in digital user experience this is known as haptics, or interactive feedback appealing to touch – opens new interpretations for the shorthand, secondhand, and sleight of hand, that these artists employ from mark, to materializing image, to contained and collective meaning.


The exhibition is welcomed by an opening reception at Waiting Room on Friday, February 6, from 7-10 pm. Waiting Room invites conversation and patronage during gallery hours and by appointment.