June 23, 2024
June 23, 2024
Three artists showed their work at the first saloon: two painters, one sculptor.
Jebediah Long
About Jeb’s work: “Existential and philosophical questioning is at the root of my process. I cast versions of myself as the protagonists in my narrative oil paintings. Joyful, relaxed, anxious, and erratic. Human, animal and spirit forms inhabit dreamlike scenes that are both specific and elusive, reflecting my minds imperfect retelling of its own history. That slippery instability of memory is represented by figures that spill around the frame and bend awkwardly. Lips multiply, eyes bulge and legs twist and touch with a strange tenderness. My unnatural palette adds to the tension. Warm highlights next to cool shadows, periwinkle flesh and magenta limbs make what might otherwise be a relatable world feel uncanny.”
IG: @jebediah_long
Thank You and Sensitive Spirit, both oil on canvas
Ash Hagerstrand
About Ash’s work: “I craft altars to unwellness and disability. As a sick teenager, I coped with my illness by obsessively searching the internet for self-help content. I tried to morph myself into the digital skin of athleisure models, followed fad diets promising to purge the ailments from my body. Using digital animation, collage, and 3D-printing, I meld the disabled body with the digital glitch to expose the false promises made by tech companies and influencers selling endless personal optimization. I appropriate and decompose images and videos of health and beauty routines, augmented by self-portraiture, 3D animation, and screenshots into baroque, maximalist compositions.”
Full statement here.
IG: @jesusluvsmemes
Anointment arms and Veronica's Veil
Oliver Charland
About Oliver’s work: “My practice is about expressing bits of emotions that interact with each other in a chaotic way. Trying to find a balance between these little elements together. It also questions the exteriorization of them with what we project outside. The digital effect, repainted manually, questions this notion of our exterior self, what we curate to show the world through these calculated emotional vulnerabilities. The backgrounds that portray sunsets remind me of beginnings and endings, fleeting versus long-lasting memories. My abstract shape exploration on top can be seen as a burst of energy and emotions, that instance where everything shifts and change.”
IG: @olicharland
Window #3, and Window #4, both acrylic on canvas