Abigail Drapkin

Double Exposures, 2016 - 2017

 

Memory is a fickle beast. It evades, disguises itself in plain sight, and rears its capricious head at unexpected times. Nowadays, smartphones capture memories in quick impulsive bursts with images reposted, liked, and forgotten. As a painter, I disengage from modern memory acquisition. At the same time I recognize photography’s role in how we remember. Through multiple exposure paintings, I dissect the disjointed movements, blurred figures, and fragments of photographic effects. Certain bold elements of the composition dominate and others fade away leaving only traces of their existence.

 

My paintings explore this push and pull between subjects in myriad ways—fragmentation, movement, juxtaposition, and psychology—all through the lens of memory. In layers of paint, milky glazes obscure faces and limbs, allowing stronger elements to come forward. Alla prima strokes and blurred drags of wet paint brush up against finely focused detail work, mirroring the selectiveness of memory. Oftentimes, we misremember fleeting moments. A pink umbrella becomes orange through the fog of memory. A face blurs, but the hand holding a shoe remains emblazoned on our consciousness. Multiple exposures condense these seconds into ghostly scenes, translucent figures moving or still. You remember the rocky cliffs behind the girl in fine detail because the girl is only there for a moment, then gone—her transparent body transient.