Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Geoffery Chadsey

The following statement by Philadelphia-born artist Geoffrey Chadsey was taken from the catalogue of his first solo museum exhibition at The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. For more on that 2007 show, read the review in Art in America.

“I draw fantasized photographs, a take on an original that is cross-bred with disparate sources to create images of androgynous, miscegenated, intergenerational fraternization. Hip-hop meets Google meets family album meets Internet chat-room. The drawings are covers and mash-ups of casual snapshots, professional portraiture, celebrity framing, and erotic posing: people performing selves for the camera and the computer. What comes out is monstrous, in Frankenstein’s sense: uncanny, an unfamiliar from familiar sources. In the past I was more concerned about rendering an image that remained photographic, convincing. Every year, I push the plasticity of the drawing further. Now, as the pencil becomes wash, the drips become prevalent, the colors more saturated, and the spaces stretched to the point where perspective starts to fail and fall flat, I am thinking more like a painter. Which is to say, the images are starting to accommodate more compositional whimsy and improvisation. It is time for things to exist on the page that do not have a direct correlate to an object seen or captured by a lens.”
-Geoffrey Chadsey, 2006.


Teen Band, 2000. Watercolor pencil on rag vellum. 56 x 33 inches.
Jam, 2006. Watercolor pencil on mylar. 42 x 70 inches.
Comforter, 2000. Watercolor pencil on rag vellum. 70 x 33 inches.
Murder Dog Circuit Party 2, 2005. Watercolor pencil on mylar. 36 x 27 inches.
Snoop, 2005. Watercolor pencil on mylar. 42 x 25 inches.
Boys In The Band, 2006. Watercolor pencil on mylar. 42 x 52 inches.