Constellating
Alex Hutton
Artist’s Statement: The desired through-line of my work is a sensitivity to the interdependence that permeates the world. I focus on the way in which we envision ourselves in relation to other living beings and how that positioning shifts overtime, looking at themes involving the continual reconceptualization of “nature,” and the individual confronting the city. Recent imagery comes from a fascination with the way animals move through a field, their experience of vulnerability, and our tendencies toward anthropomorphism.
In this particular series, largely inspired by the prevalence of night cams and trail cams that monitor the animals’ movements, I conceive of them as models reflecting ourselves, personalities, or some generic consciousness. Together with this expressive behavior is their shifting form as a group in a field that works as a compositional framework to play with. Their capacity for camouflage also becomes a means of augmenting the figure-ground relationship in the paintings.
In a broader sense, I’m interested in the areas where language and analogies break down – what seems to be fundamentally untranslatable; what is unique to any particular medium, and why. I’m also interested in connections between poetry and painting, in the way they grapple with similar formal problems such as how to access, embody, and communicate essential qualities of experience, touching on questions about the limits of subjective experience and perception.
Alex Hutton lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He received a BFA from The Cooper Union School of 2014. He has shown work in group shows at Project V Gallery, Site: Brooklyn, and Magenta Plains Gallery in New York. His work will be featured in Issue 13 of Maake Magazine. Additional work can be viewed at www.alexrosshutton.com.