Austin Furtak-Cole

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY

Artist statement

A large part of what I’ve been exploring in my work has to do with what I find to be a curious human trait. It feels to me that our brains struggle to fully assimilate what we experience and often we are forced to simplify the things we observe and encounter in order to grasp and/or cope with what is happening. I’m interested in how this skews our perception and bends the truth. I tend to oversimplify familiar forms as a way to exaggerate and expose things we take for granted. Body parts, abstract forms and illustrated objects take on symbolic potential primed for meaning and open the scenes I paint up to questioning. I think of this as having a wider consequence that hopefully encourages searching and questioning of ourselves as individuals and I’m interested in how that translates on a larger scale into society as a whole.

Artwork