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Lot Essay
New-York based painter Avery Singer is the new sensation that has captivated the American contemporary art scene. As the youngest artist represented by Hauser & Wirth, Singer’s recent New York solo exhibition with the gallery unveils her newest series — Reality Ender that blurs the boundary between reality and perception. Executed in ground-breaking and bold technical mastery, her paintings are conflation of diametrically opposing concepts that portrays historical narratives with a contemporary attitude.
Using SketchUp, a 3D modelling software, Singer virtually concocts composition for the underdrawing and projects them onto the canvas, to which she completes the work with intricate layers of airbrushed paint. Her unique artistic process transposes the 3D scene onto a 2D space, leaving behind an enthralling sight that skilfully marries analogue techniques with digital technology that traverses between realms of fiction and reality. Stripped from the artist’s touch, the flat graphic-like paintwork challenges viewer’s attachment to the materiality of painting. Singer’s subversive approach challenges the artist’s relationship to the canvas and prompts the audience to reevaluate their experience with the medium.
Untitled (Tuesday) exemplifies Singer’s critically acclaimed approach; from her unique practice to conjuring visual narrative, she converges the past and present in this emblematic piece. Executed in monochromatic grisaille, the work depicts Singer’s signature schematic figure composed of rudimentary computer-generated shapes. Reduced to pure geometric forms, the ambiguous figure is overlaid with shadows that cast beyond the picture plane, adding to the mysterious allure of the semi-figurative scene. The dramatic interplay between lights and shadows alludes to a bigger picture beyond the canvas. Contrary to the cold fictional humanoid figure, the shadows reveal a livelier landscape — adding a different dimension to the piece. The background is filled with scenic elements, from the garden fence to the greenery, flowing with organic lines juxtaposing against the figure composed with sharp geometric precision. The soft silhouette brushes against the firm structural figure, adding an invigorating ambiance to the otherwise lifeless grisaille. This contrasting composition builds onto the exciting dynamic of fiction versus reality while intensifying the interaction between digital and analogue mediums deployed in the piece. Moreover, the silhouette discloses a third layer to the picture: a layer in-between the figure and the fence. The cryptic object engages the viewer into the scene and invites them to examine the piece through multiple perspectives, pushing beyond the frames of the canvas.
The lighting illuminates this scenic background and highlights the dangling earthy-shades earrings that are reminiscent of the Bohemian style — a signature motif in Singer’s oeuvre inspired by her peculiar upbringing. With both parents as artists, Singer grew up in a creative community that shaped the bohemian lifestyle that inspired the settings for her idiosyncratic paintings. Her father worked as a projectionist for New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and she draws on from this intellectual heritage by not only implementing the digital medium into her practice but also composing a picture as if it were a scene from a film. The composition highlights Singer’s masterful translation of her digital creation to analogue materials and emphasizes the interweaving relationship between contemporary and traditional techniques.
Singer’s bravura polyphony of styles and techniques is also a testament to her rich vocabulary of art historical quotations. Singer’s geometrically stylized and fragmented works echo cubism, while the technoid primary forms and experiment with light are redolent of constructivism. The work expresses Singer’s great fascination with historical visual rhetoric: her figures nodes to Gabo Naum and Antoine Pevsner’s sculptures and draws from Marcel Duchamp’s cubist paintings. Her works evoke the aesthetics of modern avant-garde as she merges technology with historical visual tropes and reinvents classical mediums. Untitled (Tuesday) finds Singer examining her own understanding of art history through a contemporary lens and innovating within her sui generis, ingenious, multidisciplinary artistic approach that propels traditional practices to new possibilities.
Using SketchUp, a 3D modelling software, Singer virtually concocts composition for the underdrawing and projects them onto the canvas, to which she completes the work with intricate layers of airbrushed paint. Her unique artistic process transposes the 3D scene onto a 2D space, leaving behind an enthralling sight that skilfully marries analogue techniques with digital technology that traverses between realms of fiction and reality. Stripped from the artist’s touch, the flat graphic-like paintwork challenges viewer’s attachment to the materiality of painting. Singer’s subversive approach challenges the artist’s relationship to the canvas and prompts the audience to reevaluate their experience with the medium.
Untitled (Tuesday) exemplifies Singer’s critically acclaimed approach; from her unique practice to conjuring visual narrative, she converges the past and present in this emblematic piece. Executed in monochromatic grisaille, the work depicts Singer’s signature schematic figure composed of rudimentary computer-generated shapes. Reduced to pure geometric forms, the ambiguous figure is overlaid with shadows that cast beyond the picture plane, adding to the mysterious allure of the semi-figurative scene. The dramatic interplay between lights and shadows alludes to a bigger picture beyond the canvas. Contrary to the cold fictional humanoid figure, the shadows reveal a livelier landscape — adding a different dimension to the piece. The background is filled with scenic elements, from the garden fence to the greenery, flowing with organic lines juxtaposing against the figure composed with sharp geometric precision. The soft silhouette brushes against the firm structural figure, adding an invigorating ambiance to the otherwise lifeless grisaille. This contrasting composition builds onto the exciting dynamic of fiction versus reality while intensifying the interaction between digital and analogue mediums deployed in the piece. Moreover, the silhouette discloses a third layer to the picture: a layer in-between the figure and the fence. The cryptic object engages the viewer into the scene and invites them to examine the piece through multiple perspectives, pushing beyond the frames of the canvas.
The lighting illuminates this scenic background and highlights the dangling earthy-shades earrings that are reminiscent of the Bohemian style — a signature motif in Singer’s oeuvre inspired by her peculiar upbringing. With both parents as artists, Singer grew up in a creative community that shaped the bohemian lifestyle that inspired the settings for her idiosyncratic paintings. Her father worked as a projectionist for New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and she draws on from this intellectual heritage by not only implementing the digital medium into her practice but also composing a picture as if it were a scene from a film. The composition highlights Singer’s masterful translation of her digital creation to analogue materials and emphasizes the interweaving relationship between contemporary and traditional techniques.
Singer’s bravura polyphony of styles and techniques is also a testament to her rich vocabulary of art historical quotations. Singer’s geometrically stylized and fragmented works echo cubism, while the technoid primary forms and experiment with light are redolent of constructivism. The work expresses Singer’s great fascination with historical visual rhetoric: her figures nodes to Gabo Naum and Antoine Pevsner’s sculptures and draws from Marcel Duchamp’s cubist paintings. Her works evoke the aesthetics of modern avant-garde as she merges technology with historical visual tropes and reinvents classical mediums. Untitled (Tuesday) finds Singer examining her own understanding of art history through a contemporary lens and innovating within her sui generis, ingenious, multidisciplinary artistic approach that propels traditional practices to new possibilities.