Faris McReynolds: The Primitive Electric @Roberts & Tilton (October 17 – November 14, 2009)
From the press release:
There’s a sense of aimlessness about these portraits as each one resists a simple narrative
reading, opting instead for a more expansive, albeit more complicated view of the world.
McReynolds desires to paint in a primitive manner, yet this “primitivism” derives less from
stylistic choice than from the intention to communicate multiple versions of the world at once.
Here the traditional portrait is turned on its ear as figures merge into one another, blurring
literal and cultural boundaries, exposing their bodies in weirdly grotesque ways, yet without
shame. McReynolds wants nothing more than to allow these paintings to communicate freely on a variety of levels, and each exists as a visual testament not to the artist himself but to the
vagaries of a flawed and failed culture.
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