Join SPARC for the opening reception of Recent Work by Jonathan Skurnik on Saturday, July 27th from 3:00 pm-6:00 pm. Located in our new gallery space at: SPARC Gallery @ the Fremont Centre 1000 Fremont Avenue, Suite 120 South Pasadena, CA 91030 (entrance in back parking lot) ARTIST STATEMENT When it became clear at the outset of the pandemic that I’d be spending most of my time at home, I decided to work on a body of paintings that would give me the opportunity to experiment with watercolor and gouache, two media that I love but hadn’t worked with extensively. My goal was to explore color and color juxtaposition, glazing, and translucent versus opaque pigment layering. This process also gave me a chance to explore and deepen my personal abstract language. After each painting, I took notes on what I discovered during the process, and which elements I wanted to explore further in the next painting. This led to a delightful evolution from simple color fields to colors with black borders, to the idea of placing a black template of positive and negative apertures on top of simple pastel shapes. Eventually, I cut out a template that could be used to mask a variety of color field paintings. In some of the paintings, I sought to balance positive and negative space so that the distinction would disappear in the viewer’s eye. The aim was to provide a visual experience of non-duality that would serve as both a metaphor and an actual experience of ascendancy past the illusion of multiplicity. I concluded that I either don’t have the skill to achieve this, or it is simply not possible (without taking some kind of hallucinogenic, at least). From there, I transitioned to a more playful approach, with elongated, biomorphic shapes and stripes that suggest algae, seaweed or fungi dancing to primordial rhythms. In all these paintings, one might detect echoes of other painters whose work I admire and unconsciously emulate, and I invite you to guess who these artists might be. ABOUT THE ARTIST Jonathan Skurnik is an award-winning filmmaker and visual artist living in Southern California. In the service of his artistic vision, Jonathan uses a wide variety of mediums, including ceramics, painting, print-making, video installation, writing, found objects and mixed media. He has exhibited his visual art and videos in galleries in New York City and Los Angeles.
