James Pederson

Region: South

Website: http://www.jamespedersonartist.com/

City / State: Madison, WI

When considering the omnipresence of screens, it is clear that screen time is as much an integrated part of life as a form of escape from it. We are required to maintain a split consciousness between screens and physical space. My recent paintings feature images of NFL broadcasts, which combine the unpredictability of live television with the emotional investment of sports fanaticism, perhaps the last stronghold of television as a real-time shared event or collective experience.

In making the paintings, I constantly explore ways to break up the continuity of the surface through moments of gratuitous paint application or the attachment of cast objects to the surface. I see this as a way to posit painting as a visual experience that stands in stark contrast with screen displays. Whereas the slick surface of a screen is designed to negate its own objecthood and preserve the allure of the image, the relatively chunky surface of a painting reveals the process of its own construction in the brushwork and other forms of painterly facture.