Jeff Conefry

Region: Northeast

Website: http://www.jeffconefry.com/

City / State: Brooklyn, NY

In my current work, I focus on the materiality and process of painting, using abstraction as embodied symbols to speak to the wholeness of the medium. The work is not meant to be conclusive but, rather, provisionally aphoristic, leading to more in-depth explorations. Each piece is materially specific and includes a limited set of formal variables. Physical exploitation makes the work view-specific—a viewer’s presence is required for it to be understood—creating a distinction between paint and picture.

As with materiality, process is fundamental. My approach relies on experiments with displaced action, where a commonly understood action is spatially and temporarily contradicted. For example, a brushstroke created spontaneously in one place at one time is physically placed in a new context, detached from its original situation. This comparative contradiction helps me evaluate varied approaches to my object making, understanding all too well the history that all painting is forced to bear.