Cindy Phenix

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Artist statement

Cindy Phenix works at the intersection of painting, drawing, textile and sculpture, merging abstraction and figuration. Phenix vibrant, fractured compositions suggest ambiguous narratives related to systems of power, social convention, and the environmental crisis. Each scenery is populated by chimerical figures, amoebic forms, and elements of architecture and landscape that intermix, dissolving and cohering in abstract gestures. The eye moves between passages where narrative figuration is foregrounded and those that revel in the raw materiality. Characters - often monstrous or spectral - recur across Phenix’s compositions, creating an overarching sense of a fugue-like universe in which the artist plays out utopian and dystopian scenarios. Collage guides Phenix’s work, both technically and conceptually. Drawing from archival materials that span scientific imagery, natural history publications, and art history, Phenix digitally construct collages, abstracting and enlarging details and playing with context. Then projects these images onto surfaces and traces the projected outlines, incorporating distortions from shadow and light. Phenix works with a variety of materials, watercolors, pastel under clear gesso, oil paint mixed with wax, textiles, and mosaic on poplar structures. For Phenix, the collage form reflects notions of synthesis, collectivity, and unity - conditions that might offer an antidote to the exigent social and environmental issues of our time....

Artwork