Dustin London: Scared of Dying

About

In Dustin London’s new paintings pictorial space is something malleable, shifting, and subversive. Each composition is a finely calibrated balance of idiosyncratic elements that forms a new spatial proposition, possessing a distinct identity and an oftentimes paradoxical logic. Space is not the stage for an event; it is the event itself.

These works begin as digital drawings where long periods of time working in front of a monitor induce a disembodied state; a total immersion where a sense of the tangible world is lost in a digital space that is weightless, without surface, consisting only of light. This world is then translated into the tactile reality of painting through a cumulative process similar to that of a dot matrix printer, with small strokes or bands painted in a regulated and mechanical fashion, forming gradients through minute striations of individual colors. These gradients become conveyor belts moving planes of space with color. Multiple layers of color build to create an internal luminosity reminiscent of the screen, as painting chases the digital aura of the image.