Sean Downey
Region: Northeast
My paintings try to imagine the underlying circumstances of an
image’s origin. In many of them, cinematography serves as a visual
metaphor for the machinery of image production and its relation
to lived experience. The production of photographs and films that
commenced in the nineteenth century and later morphed into
video and digital image production has in recent years increased
exponentially. Individuals have become curators of a neverending
online exhibition of images and videos that emerge and
disappear at breakneck speed. In the face of technological shifts,
the slow, analog, and relatively clunky language of handmade
paintings becomes a way to both resist and revel in nonstop image
production (the painting studio is also, after all, a kind of machine
that generates images). The imagery within the work is drawn
from a wide variety of cinematic, historical, and autobiographical
sources. The juxtaposition of incongruous visual elements speaks
to the nonlinear, associative way that we recall events and
narratives as well as to the ways in which autobiography, cultural
memory, and invention can become inextricably intermingled
over time.