Phantom Gallery Solo Painting and Installation Habitat
Opening Reception January 15th, 2010, 5pm to 8pm, see more information below
Top image: "Self-Portrait: Palm Harbor" 2009, oil on linen, 60" x 74"
Bottom image: 2009 series of cardboard panels for habitat installation, each panel measures roughly 84" x 48"
Frederic Carpenter Installation: If These Walls Could Talk from Frederic Carpenter on Vimeo .
Articles and Press:
EMPIRE REPORT
City of Santa Rosa Phantom Gallery Site
Play the 1/5/10 KRCB radio interview - length, 5 minutes
Gallery Information
Yahoo Map of Phantom Gallery, Santa Rosa
The Phantom Gallery is open Wednesday through Saturday, 12pm to 5pm. Gallery phone is: 707-543-4512
Parking: There is a large multi-level public parking lot directly next door to the gallery building. The hourly rate is reasonable and you're off the street.
What is a painting and installation habitat?
The intention of my work titled "If these walls could talk " is to blend drawing and painting with the artifice of a small dwelling or shed. Inscribing on impermanent and recycled materials suggests the ephemeral nature of all life which I believe is an oblique challenge to the American Dream of eternal youth. Since my paintings are synthesized responses to photographic stimulus and my drawings are often dream-based diagrams and figurative assemblages, the walls of the installation will be covered with various segments of images, figures and text. Americans spend a high percentage of their time indoors, and one of the most important features of the American Dream is to own a home. In a sense, some will view the work as a kind of elaborate graffiti, which further reminds the viewer of abandoned homes across the country of recent vintage. Others will see a meticulously decorated shrine to the home.
I have no interest in directly influencing the interpretations of this work, but rather have them emerge freely and openly. I believe my role as the artist is to offer the work free of elaborate descriptions and interpretive guidelines such that the viewers may challenge their own ideas and beliefs sufficiently to engage the work as deeply as possible. In this sense, the viewers become an integral part of the narrative.
Once the work has been deinstalled, I plan to cut the walls and surfaces into large book covers that will contain pages of photos of the work and viewer reactions.
Artist Statement "If These Walls Could Talk"
I hope that people will think more deeply and be a little more confused after looking at my work. I believe that people engage with things they do not understand, which is a primal instinct. I purposefully remove connections between images because I don't want to undermine the viewer's natural instinct to find them.
My craft is devising a way to work that promotes detachment from literal meaning. Painting is uniquely suited to deconstructing images - yet the process I go through to enable the deconstruction is anything but calculated. Regular painting from the figure has enabled me to develop a natural flow to my working style that allows interpretation of the image to guide the outcome rather than a fastidious reliance on perfectly duplicating the subject. In order to keep a freshness about the work, I do not rely on formulas but rather a kind of meditation that works on instinct and impulse rather than logic and methodology. I try to take the experiment as far as possible, as often as possible. The results have been the inspiration for this exhibit.
Through the life painting work, I have discovered working on cardboard as an exciting and unforgiving media. The natural brown surface is flexible for a base color and, with a little patience, has proven to be a suitable surface. The concept of building a small-scale house out of cardboard paintings was a perfect metaphor for so many things in modern life, from packaging to habitation to art and back. It mirrors the modern American dream construct of the house becoming a visual edifice of success. Furthermore, it speaks to the lives and experiences we create in them. The ephemeral, recycled nature of cardboard is also an important conceptual ingredient, being a basic underlying staple of modern existence. I have chosen to paint a variety of figurative images, mostly gleaned from Internet sources and my personal image library. Calligraphy and typography have long been a part of my painting language and inevitably appears on occasion, hopefully driving the viewer further down the path of mystery and personal investigation.
