Opening Reception: October 19, 2013 5—7 p.m.
Sharon Weiner’s abstract paintings emerge from a process of self-reflection and rigorous manipulation of paint. In her current series, Weiner trains acrylic paint into corporeal volumes that seem suspended in various states of motion or metamorphosis. The forms are set in nebulous or vast, inky spaces made up of layer upon layer of paint that is alternately brushed, poured and airbrushed onto her canvases.
The painterly forms in Weiner’s work have a likeness to cosmic bursts, rushes of water or cellular functions; they congeal and splay out in fluid, directional drips that appear to cast a light from within. While the paintings assume a nature-like aspect, they are grounded in the non-physical realm of the artist’s consciousness. The paintings, and the methods she employs to create them, represent a personal vocabulary that harnesses and translates her internal dialogue. Her process, which is akin to those employed by postwar American abstract painters, provides access into the psychological spaces on which her paintings are based. While her intuitive process aligns with her predecessors, the work is cast into present-day with their slick, finished surfaces.
“My paintings,” Weiner states, “visualize the process of self-revelation in a kind of internal dialogue. My direct and indirect exposure to the practice of psychoanalysis through family members who are psychoanalysts has been long and sustained, providing me with an unusual awareness of my own consciousness, interaction with the world, and the meaning of my dreams. As a result, I know better than to recount my experience in my art; instead, I give visual form to what experiencing my life feels like – indeed, to what awareness itself, an abstract concept, feels like.