Justin Bower paints his subjects as de-stabilized, fractured post-humans in a nexus of interlocking spatial systems. His paintings problematize how we define ourselves in this digital and virtual age while suggesting the impossibility of grasping such a slippery notion.
Bower’s paintings begin to open a dialogue to the destabilizing effect/trauma technology has on the individual that has infected the daily lives of contemporary man. He shows this destabilization through the doubling of features – multiple eyes, spliced noses, melting mouths – and the whiplash motion invoked in his Abstract Expressionist process.
His paintings reflect the increasing “control society” that we find ourselves in. By placing his turbulent subjects in an Op Art context, the familiar repeating patterns that were used to engage the eye in the 60’s, are now being deployed to act as a type of “code” permeating and invading the body/subject.
Bower wants to “have the viewer feel the instability his subjects reflect”, by playing on the non-fixed features of the face and the hallucinatory effects of the Op Art, so as to engage the viewer and perhaps awaken them from a techno-slumber.
Born in San Francisco, Bower earned a degree in Art and Philosophy from the University of Arizona and a Master of Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate University. Bower’s work has been shown at galleries, museums, and international art fairs including. The artist has won and been nominated for several grants and awards, among them The Feitelson Fellowship Grant (2010) and The Joan Mitchell award (2010).
Images courtesy of Justin Bower
Discover: www.justinbower.com
