Virtual: New Mexico highlights artists Paula Wilson and Scott Anderson, who live and work in the deserted Southwestern state famous for its vibrant art scene. This virtual exhibition was selected to coincide with Denny Dimin Gallery’s presentation of their work at UNTITLED Miami Beach in December 2019.
Virtual: New Mexico includes two prints each titled Mooning by Wilson and a new painting titled Drive-thru Salad by Anderson. These artworks are accompanied by candid videos of the artists in their studios speaking on their practice, context, and working life. The virtual exhibition format allows the viewer to explore the artists’ work in situ. Anderson introduces his daily routine in a studio outpost behind his home in Albuquerque, while Wilson invites us to explore her cavernous 5,000 square foot studio space in Carrizozo, a sparsely populated, old railroad town.
To view additional works that will be on view at UNTITLED Miami Beach visit our fair page.
One can see she views the body as a process and amalgamation of fragments collectively woven together to enact presence in space. Specifically, her previous works and current play on tapestries illustrate critical examinations of viewership and the body within the contexts of Classical and Renaissance-era makership, as well as the art historical imagery produced by spiritual institutions.
The title [for my last show, Streaming by Lamp and by Fire] uses keywords belonging to three separate time periods. “Streaming”, in this case, references the current moment of rapidly downloading content via the internet, “Lamp” has the modern and immediately pre-modern eras covered, and “fire” belongs to the broadly primitive. The metaphor for painting here is basically doing something by the light of three different periods simultaneously. It is also proposing that the something being done is happening in three different keys simultaneously, if streaming is about entertaining, a lamp is studious, and a fire is ritualistic. Seems to me the fate of the contemporary painter is to channel multiple moments of painting’s history and its functions all at once when they go to make a painting – or maybe they are all there whether the painter is conscious of them or not? I actually enjoy thinking about how many of them are in a painting and the more at odds they seem with one another, the better.
