Yesterday, I had the opportunity to visit the Long Island City studio of Canadian born, New York based painter, Jordan Broadworth.
Broadworth's layred, evocative pieces present multiple takes on the figure / ground relationship as isolated segments blur or refine depths of field. The focus is constantly shifted between planes and layers, the hard edge and the liltingly biomorphic. The employed grid combines with a metaphysical openness to lull viewers into a techno trance and jolt them back out again. The resulting paintings are grand, superb hybrids of our increasingly digital environment and a more expansive, human reservoir that we seek even as we leave it behind.
Broadworth in his studio, Long Island City, 2013
From the artist's statement:
Paintings lead double lives nowadays. Every flesh and blood work spawns a pixilated and highly itinerate twin. How we read and interpret paintings has changes through the experience of viewing work on-line. Serving as a control group for immediate experience is one of paintings most important and enduring functions. Painting has always demanded the one-on-one physical encounter. But the much more social backlit proxy has its own unique glow as it moves from screen to screen. Like many of us, some paintings simply look cooler on-line. My work functions in the gap between the immediate and the mediated – informed by displacement as much as by the corporeal and material.
My paintings are the end result of a pre-determined series of actions; each action occupies a separate layer and is assigned a specific color. Layers may contain geometric shapes, a variety of grids or a tightly packed gesture. The disjuncture between the way that time is held in the making and subsequent viewing of a painting is a central concern. The drying time left between layers is as critical as the painting of each layer. The content and assembly varies from work to work but the final stage is always the same; layers are compressed and time is collapsed as I draw a blade across the surface. The result is a smooth, uniform surface and a leveling between figure and ground, gesture and structure, chance and intention.
To view Jordan Broadworth's work in person check out his upcoming show of new work:
Opening: September 19, 5 - 8 PM
September 18 - October 12, 2013
6341 Boilevard St-Laurent
Montréal, QC H2S 3C3
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