Anton Chapman - In Arcadia: New Paintings
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Artist statement
I think of my work as the witness to a sort of continuous unraveling of the objectivity and reason that shaped my training as a student.
Abstraction is for me a natural outcome in my development as a painter. Meaning, for me, does not occur through the prescriptive confines of narrative but through paint and the painting process. Abstraction, for me, is emotional, political and artistic freedom because it operates in the realms of the imagination. The title of this show, “In Arcadia”, alludes to this point of view: in the ideated world of mythology and the imagination, we find the world that is Arcadia.
In my paintings the remnants and shadows of previous layers and the subsequent follow through of color reflects a desire to convey an enigmatic tension and the ebb and flow, which can occur between perception and conception.
This process reflects my engagement with the expressive power of the unconscious and its ability to make the world mysterious to the everyday eye.
Anton Paul Chapman