Art
#Nick Gentry
#painting
#portraits
#technology
“Masks 1” (2023), used VHS cassette tapes, spray paint, and oil paint on wooden, 20.5 x 29.5 inches. All pictures © Nick Gentry, courtesy of Robert Fontaine Gallery, shared with permission
In Pores and skin Deep, Nick Gentry probes the “chasm between actual and on-line personas.” Engaged on painted backdrops of outdated know-how like floppy disks and VHS tapes, the artist invitations questions which can be uniquely modern, asking about efficiency and presentation on the web, more and more synthetic requirements of magnificence, and the instability of reminiscence over time.
Diverging from his earlier portraits that had been extra trustworthy to a topic’s likeness, Gentry’s new physique of labor is deeply influenced by the digital. He typically paints his figures in grayscale, leaving them devoid of defining traits, and makes use of the tape’s plastic reels to focus on their eyes. This melding of human and machine elicits the chilly, indifferent feeling related to a cyborg and emphasizes the artificial, masked nature of on-line identities. Given the irrelevance of the once-groundbreaking know-how, the portraits additionally converse to the inevitable shifts in significance and the way info is saved, shared, and remembered.
Pores and skin Deep is on view by means of September 30 at Robert Fontaine Gallery in Miami Seashore. You will discover extra from Gentry on his site and Instagram.
“Replicant 3” (2023), used VHS cassette tapes, spray paint, and oil paint on wooden, 20.5 x 29.5 inches
“Viewing Figures” (2022), used VHS cassette tapes and paint on wooden, 25 x 37 inches
“Pores and skin Deep” (2023), used VHS cassette tapes, spray paint, and oil paint on wooden, 45 x 45 inches
“Analogue Montage #1” (2023), used VHS cassette tapes, spray paint, and oil paint on wooden, 32.25 x 37 inches
Left: “The Idiot” (2023), used VHS cassette tapes, spray paint, and oil paint on wooden, 10 x 9 inches. Proper: “Populous” (2023), used pc disks and oil paint on wooden, 37 x 28 inches
“Binary” (2021), used floppy disks and paint on wooden, 19 x 32 inches
#Nick Gentry
#painting
#portraits
#technology
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