ARTIST STATEMENT

Painting itself is not the anachronism that critics, curators, and artists make it out to be; the painter who tries to take back the image, however, is. I have resisted object fetishism to the point that some of my paintings only exist as photographs; when I was sandwiched between the Williamsburg Bridge and a fenced-in empty plot of land in Brooklyn, NYC, I saw every sort of discard in every stage of decay. For three years I photographed those objects in 360-degrees and laid down impressions of their colors and contours (sometimes over figurative elements), deliberately obfuscating their nature so that new forms could arise out of the debris. When one approaches objects from the standpoint of having their own ontology, which undercuts observation, then the rectangular delineations of stretcher bars become windows onto familiar but reversed worlds within.

It’s within these reverse-stagings that I counteract, on a personal level, the colonizing onslaught of knowledge and production on imagination and play. Empty (unquantifiable) time is globalization’s most potent byproduct because we get a taste of immortality--and what we do with it underscores the modern predicament of capitalism as a means to no end. What I’m presenting, both sympathetically and as a foil, is the non-linearity of the painted space, built upon a surface that--after days of working--is oftentimes all but wiped away. This collision of narratives and signs precipitates new arrangements on the level of immediate context, where the universal has no ground--Meaning, here, cannot be handed down.

BIOGRAPHY

Winston Chmielinski received his BA in Philosophy and reative Writing from NYU’s Gallatin School in 2011, and has since exhibited extensively, with solo shows in NY, Berlin, and an inclusion in last year's Venice Biennale. Chmielinski's most recent solo show made Art in America's "Berlin's Best" roundup for 2013, and NY Arts Magazine named him one of five artists to watch during all of Armory Week 2013.  After presenting his first multimedia installation this past July in Berlin, Winston has been invited todevelop another site-specific work for ARTSHO5 in Istanbul, which runs from November 20-24. "Whole Is a Hand That Shakes," Winston's second solo show in Germany and first with Thomas Fuchs Gallery, opens January 9, 2015.