Avery Singer

Untitled

Price available upon request

2016
Acrylic on canvas stretched over wood panel
198 x 155 x 6 cm / 78 x 61 x 2 ⅜ in

Shifting seamlessly between digital and analogue processes, ‘Untitled’ (2016) captures Avery Singer’s dynamic visual rhetoric, which employs the binary language of computer programs and industrial materials while engaging with the tradition of painting and the legacy of modernism.

Singer’s complex process begins with a finely primed gessoed canvas, which in this instance is stretched over wood panel. Images, geometrically rendered in the 3D modeling program SketchUp, are then projected onto the canvas and developed with airbrushed acrylic paint—a highly meticulous process that highlights the artist’s unwavering dexterity and precision. This concentrated approach lends an intricate and layered dimensionality to Singer’s work, allowing her to conceive a commanding and otherworldly scene, a kind of trompe l’oeil.

Blurring the boundary between reality and perception, Singer depicts two figures that are reduced to a series of lines, grids and rudimentary forms with cubed fingers that cover their faces. These humanoids, which carry somber expressions, reappear throughout the artist’s practice, as seen in related works such as ‘Anxiety Painting’ (2014, MoMA), ‘Untitled’ (2016, Carnegie Museum of Art) and ‘Untitled (Monday)’ (2017, Detroit Institute of Arts). In this painting, the figures emerge from an expansive black backdrop, translucent and glowing in blue. This color choice further enhances the powerful, digital nature of the composition, resonating with the blue light emitted from computer screens and handheld devices. As is characteristic of her practice, Singer limits color to emphasize the three-dimensional effects of light and shadow, instilling a greater sense of weight, depth and physicality in the work.

Formally and through their subject matter, Singer’s paintings nod to past art historical movements such as constructivism, futurism, and cubism. In this work, the figures at once resonate with Pablo Picasso’s fragmented portraits from the early 20th Century as well as Franz Marc’s geometric breakdowns of animals. Accordingly, through the use of new technologies to depict past art historical references, Singer pushes past the limitations of painting.

About the artist

Avery Singer (b. 1987) was born and raised in New York. Growing up in a creative community, Singer experimented with photography, film and drawing, but in those years never considered working with paint. In 2008, Singer studied at the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, and in 2010, she received her B.F.A. from Cooper Union, New York. After graduation, she discovered her chosen art form from an unanticipated experiment with SketchUp. Since then, Singer has employed the binary language of computer programs and industrial materials to remove the trace of the artist’s hand while engaging the tradition of painting and the legacy of modernism.

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