Overview
Inspired by the documentation of major events from the twentieth century, Gonzales’ meticulously crosshatched paintings examine the American cultural landscape through the visual language of photography.
Inspired by the documentation of major events from the twentieth century, Gonzales’ meticulously crosshatched paintings examine the American cultural landscape through the visual language of photography.
Wayne Gonzales was born in 1957 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He lives and works in New York.
Gonzales’ painstakingly rendered paintings employ a rigorous formal structure to explore the relationship between photography and communal memory. His works begin with imagery from newspapers, magazines, the Internet, his own photography or that of iconic American modernists such as Walker Evans and Charles Sheeler. Emulating a photographer conducting post-production, Gonzales approaches the composition of his paintings by using digital technology to crop, edit and manipulate his source imagery. Often confined to a palette of sepia tones or hazy shades redolent of lens flare, the finished works highlight the mechanical and ephemeral feel of their sources.
Whilst the genesis of his paintings bears common ground with the photography-based political works of Gerhard Richter and Andy Warhol, Gonzales insists on a shift in the perception of photographic truth. Using a distinctive crosshatching technique centred on the effects of chiaroscuro, he models form through differing densities of interlocking brush strokes to create seductive effects of light and shade. Whilst this method offers visual clarity when viewed from afar, his paintings dissolve into an abstract assemblage of interlocking lines when seen up close, recalling pixilation. By emphasising the incidental and malleable aspects of photography, Gonzales’ works call into question the accuracy and reliability associated with reportage and formal documentation.
