Figurative Painting Show @ Agitator Gallery

These works were created in the unnerving first year of the covid pandemic. While “work from home” sounded like an adult snow-day at first, the subsequent months of indefinite professional isolation shattered almost all norms the 9-to-5, and all its social rituals were lost. The paintings were made with a complicated mix of feelings about the corporate milieu, and the demands to keep marching along virtually, “business as usual,” while the designated physical workspaces evaporated. That is to say, the works don’t offer simple nostalgia for these lost grounds. The office environment was simultaneously sterile and hostile.

The paintings are in isometric perspective, speaking the preferred visual language of cookie-cutter PowerPoint “slideware” illustrations, which lends a floating and detached quality to the art, while the contents range from the slice-of-life (in the case of Business Casual) to the bad-dreamy (Human Resources). These nod toward the works Edward Hopper for some sentiments; even when there isn’t a singular figure in the paintings, the figures are solitary—they don’t directly interact, they face away or askance. When the figures are isolated, they’re frantic.