Details:
① Artwork:
Mixed Signifiers
The artist started this painting by “playing around with a sort of pathetic lesbian want” but soon found it a complex task to balance its masculine toxicity with a vulnerable need for attention. Eventually, she made it into a self-deprecating self-portrait to own the traumatic imagery. Simultaneously, its sparseness and odd details (an apple core precariously placed) scrambles its meaning.
Sarah Bastress makes compositions populated by queer people and creatures from rural America found in various states of both aggressive and tender play. Her bodies are full of possibilities, as they intentionally portray explicit imagery and signifiers that either add up to joy or menace, although without any firm conclusions.
Specs:
The face on this figure is painted slightly more realistically than many other paintings, and is a more direct “self portrait” of the artist. Visible stains from underpainting are present along the sides of the painting, showing the loose and energetic painting style that many paintings start out with.
③ Artist:
Sarah Bastress makes compositions populated by queer people and creatures from rural America found in various states of both aggressive and tender play. Most of her paintings are self-contained narratives ruminating on her own body and how it relates to other bodies. Full of queer excitement, visual puns, and a healthy dose of self-deprecation, the scenes in her paintings are born out of the confusion and longing of the pandemic era, having become even more preposterous, surreal, and ambiguous since. Bastress’s bodies are full of possibilities, as they intentionally portray explicit imagery and signifiers that either add up to joy or menace, although without drawing any firm conclusions.
Sarah Bastress was born in 1989 in Kingwood, WV, and lives in Chicago, IL. She received her BA in Government from Smith College in Northampton, MA (2012) and her MFA in Painting and Drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, IL (2016).
She has mounted solo exhibitions at RUSCHMAN, Chicago, IL (2022), and Boundary, Chicago, IL (2019).
Bastress has also been featured in group exhibitions, including The Long Dream at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2020); Sticky Thoughts at Julius Caesar, Chicago, IL (2018); and Animal Farm at Dalton Warehouse in Los Angeles, CA (2017).
The artist started this painting by “playing around with a sort of pathetic lesbian want” but soon found it a complex task to balance its masculine toxicity with a vulnerable need for attention. Eventually, she made it into a self-deprecating self-portrait to own the traumatic imagery.More
- Unframed
- Signed
