Kris Casey

Lives and works in Chicago, IL, USA

Artist statement

I have always been fascinated with the material of paint, with the object of the brush, with the illusion of space, form, light and depth. I cannot take painting out of my personal history - at nearly every turn, painting lies deeply entangled in my own heterogeneous subjectivity. It is fascination and pleasure, yet it is also responsibility, longing and desire. And although my practice now incorporates different media and diverse visual resources, the fundamental aesthetic is that of the painter and the challenges of that medium. I define my painting process as “Ecofeminist Action Painting”, a term which combines ecofeminism, feminist actionism and action painting. Working at a large scale, on unstretched canvas on the floor, the canvas becomes an arena for investigation and what accumulates on the surface acts as a record of an event, a moment, or what could be considered an “act of nature” . The goal is the depiction of matter as it takes on form spontaneously, or, allowing form to arise by way of inner impulse. My concern lies in how we currently relate to nature and technology, how we think about it, what we imagine it to do. And so my work does a lot of things. It draws upon media aesthetics, philosophy of nature, science and technology studies and new material feminism. It questions our posthuman era of rapid biological and technological change. Incorporating painting, sculpture and new media, my practice explores the limits and tensions of these concerns and seeks...

Artwork