Greg Santos recently received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Santos employs video and photography to create stunning, light-filled paintings that transfix the viewer. His recent body of work depicts utterly improbable images of staged peril and extravagant disaster. The paintings focus on subjects in direct proximity to injury and death and include a man ruthlessly carrying his infant son by one arm, a horse dangling upside down from a steel train trellis, and an indistinct, black form clinging to the face of a glass skyscraper. The experience is disconcerting. Although the situations depicted are incredible, they feel strangely familiar. The results of these investigations are beautiful images of intimate proportion that emulate the transience of video and photography, while retaining the materiality of paint. The works are created by layering thin glazes of oil paint to create luminous, translucent surfaces. Closer inspection reveals gossamer figures interlaced to create an elusive and incandescent abstract field. Yet from the slightest distance, they coalesce into a recognizable whole. These descriptions allude to the tenets of Impressionism, but Santos does not carry on the traditional study of natural light and shadow. Instead, he focuses on representations of the electric light that emanates from the TV screen, a phenomena we are all intimately and psychologically connected to. |
