Brian Willmont - Technical Ecstasy

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 3rd, 6-9 pm

Exhibition Dates: March 3rd - March 31st, 2018

In a recent visit to New York-based artist Brian Willmont’s studio, he noted that recent paintings adorned with smoke, flames, butterflies and various other subjects and feats of absolute airbrush wizardry seemed more geared towards the visual proclivities of a Hot- Topic consumer than your average art-goer. With this gleeful revelation in mind, Willmont’s latest body of work plumbs the depths of supposed “poor taste” in an earnest search for meaning, pleasure and authenticity amidst the disconnection of our increasingly virtual contemporary times.

Willmont’s works are painted almost exclusively by airbrush–that odd tool that connects both analog and virtual spaces, existing simultaneously as one of the more recent inventions of physically applying pigment to a surface as well as a primary tool used within the culturally-ubiquitous virtual confines of Photoshop. Thus, Willmont’s paintings though painted completely by hand feel as if they’re toeing the lines of our increasingly narrowing digital-analog divide. Within the works, there’s an odd mixing of disparate sensibilities, from hot rod custom paint jobs to Lisa Frank folder illustrations–both in their own ways harkening back to a precipitous place that speaks to the early 90’s adoption of the World Wide Web, and this brief moment of insulated innocence from which we would soon be wrenched.