Marty Schnapf. Apparitions

About

Since 2019, Schnapf has developed a unique visual language with deconstructed compositions anchored in the figure and the natural world. Created in his Chinatown studio, these mostly large-scale paintings foreground figures in elaborately articulated pastoral landscapes and vibrant architectural interiors. This is Marty Schnapf's third solo exhibition with our gallery.

Schnapf’s paintings evoke sensual and psychological space: figures overlap, or a single figure assumes various irreconcilable positions. Apparitions continues an ongoing body of work of emotionally complex tableaus which explore the fluid interplay between the physical and psychological dimensions of human connection, isolation, and independence. 

This artist describes his painting practice as a way to communicate with people closelyand enter into empathic relationships. “I think of apparitions as an externalization of the innumerable selves we carry within. In much of my work over the last few years I have considered the aspect of these selves that represent our past and future potential. Here, I'm more focused on the arrival of a being that is at once of us and at the same time wholly apart from anything we understand about ourselves.”

Marty Schnapf works in a variety of visual and time-based disciplines, but in recent years has focused on his “foundation” in painting and drawing. Having spent several years developing performance-based installations and events, his investigations in these mediums, particularly dance, continue to inform his work today. Cognizant of the audience’s role in the activation of meaning, he builds multi-layered works that unfold slowly, rewarding prolonged viewing with ever-changing revelations. Schnapf regards his paintings as time-based works. He believes, “there is no better avenue by which to approach the inconstant emotional and psychological space experienced in dream, desire, memory, and premonition.”