Date: Sunday, October 20
Address: The Millitzer Studio & Gallery, 3103 Pestalozzi St, St. Louis, MO 63118
Media: Painting
Studio Features: Restroom, Refreshments, Work For SaleChloe West, Installation of 1st FLR APT, 2019. Oil paintings on canvas and linen. Courtesy of the artist and PRACTISE Gallery. Chloe West, Bush, 2019. Oil on linen. Courtesy of the artist and PRACTISE Gallery. Chloe West, Installation 2 of 1st FLR APT, 2019. Oil paintings on panel. Courtesy of the artist and PRACTISE Gallery. Chloe West, Linoleum with Fluorescents, 2017-18. Oil on panel. Courtesy of the artist and PRACTISE Gallery. Chloe West, Violet Eye, 2018. Oil on panel. Courtesy of the artist and PRACTISE Gallery. My paintings investigate the body and its relationship to the spaces it inhabits. I paint the surfaces of the everyday, enfleshing material skins. Objects such as windows and linoleum tiles are presented with works that show fragmented views of the body: contrasting materials of banality with moments of intimacy. Together, these works create a nonlinear narrative that explores the subjectivity of the body as it relates to place. The painting process is durational, tender, and engages in deep looking to question the gaze and themes of accessibility.
My work engages with various modes of painting and representation, referencing the vast history of the medium. My paintings jump through time, grappling with Classical nudes, sublime landscapes, and modernist abstraction. My paintings depicting venetian blinds reference hard edge abstraction but reveal themselves to be a mundane object painted laboriously. Linoleum tiles sit on the floor, recalling Minimalist form. The surface, however, remains gestural, detailed, and reveals my hand. Figural works are caught under disintegrating, saturated light that references the language of the monochrome and of photographic filters. I take forays into the languages of painters and sculptors throughout time, both using and undermining their imaging techniques.