Square
This is an image of Casey Lynch, also known as Square. The grid is made up of squares, the high contrast colors are based on the object way that he thinks, his artwork, and the work of Sol Lewitt and Ad Rienhardt, which are artists that influence Casey's work, and this painting. Painting is a way for me to relate ideas about people and art history so that when I make a portrait, it is in an expanded sense that is more than just a likeness. It is a painting as a synthesis of reductivist aesthetics and the maximalist intention of building a painting by relating as many references as possible. The photographic space within the painting is broken up so that each photographic increment is separated. This allows the photographic elements to be seen as a system of mark-making, which negates the overall illusion in favor of a more conceptually pure reference to Photorealism in its original sense. It is based on the process of transcribing a photographic image onto another surface through the use of paint. Conversely, the striped increments can be seen within a Minimalist context so that every stripe on the canvas is a one inch measurement of the painting as a real object that exists in our space. They are therefore realistic, while the photographic increments are decidedly illusionistic. It is this reversal of ordinary perspective that acts as a filter for everything I paint, to actually view this painting is to be engaged with it as a situation, and therefore engages the viewer even physically into an experience that acts as a mirror to our reality.