Scott Wolniak
Gallery Affiliations: Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chambers @916
Region: Midwest
Website: http://www.scottwolniak.com
City / State: Chicago, IL
Over the past several years, I have been investigating thresholds and breaking points in my work, both in subject and technique. A combination of manual and technological processes produce hybrid forms that blur the lines between found and made, the contemplative and the humorous. Engaged with the problems of both sculpture and painting, I explore visual phenomena observed in my immediate environment. Everyday life exists in the subject matter I bring to the studio, but also in the nature of my daily art-making practice.
In my current plaster tablets and relief paintings, I build atmospheric spaces through sustained mark making on irregular surfaces. These pieces refer to ancient tablets, geological souvenirs, and ambiguous artifacts, with intentionally “wrong” techniques being deployed to destabilize form. Based on the idea of bidirectional becoming, additive and subtractive gestures occur simultaneously, resulting in the excavation of stratified visual fields. I embed surface within support to create a tension between the image and object and to reveal the internal aspects of a work’s making.