LUKE HARNDEN: Dreams of You

Los Angeles-based artist Luke Harnden takes full advantage of our world’s inundation of images to create paintings that allude to their various means of transmission and presentation. Though his calculated and intricate process mimics the appearance of CRT television screens, the images flow and develop depending on the viewer’s distance and engagement. The works are both representational and abstract as he considers photography through the lens of painting. The artist states he selects images “because of their strange aesthetic gravity…formal properties and alluring qualities.” Harnden’s work reminds us that our relationship to images, their manipulation, and creation in any media is complex and intangibly emotional—and often individually personal.

Harnden was born in New Orleans, raised in Texas, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. The OJAC is thrilled for his return to Texas to share his work, including a new body of intriguing paintings that builds on his interest in “the lively effects of the photographic image and the technical structure which supports those images.”

KEER TANCHAK: Company Retreat

Dallas-based artist Keer Tanchak’s initial desire to reject painting on canvas was further inspired by Mexican painter Frida Kahlo’s practice of reworking traditional Ex-Voto and Retablo paintings on tin. Tanchak often paints on irregularly cut aluminum sheeting that stands in stark contrast to her expressive, yet delicately rendered, portraits and vignettes. Her subjects are mined from art history books, magazines, and movie stills. Appropriated and recontextualized, the images often depict women and interiors throughout history that reflect on pleasure and wealth, the redirection of the male gaze, and traditional portraiture. The shaped paintings are experienced differently within changing environments and context. The OJAC’s jail cells are a prime and provocative venue for the interaction.