Artist Jonathan Chapline’s new works blur the boundary between the rendered and painted

Brooklyn-based artist Jonathan Chapline’s new body of paintings, House Work communicates his fondness for digital aesthetics, “with a particular interest in exploring how technological developments impact the ways we mediate the world around us”. The series will be unveiled at Victori + Mo gallery, Brooklyn.

A graduate of the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, Jonathan transfers his traditional analogue artistic processes to represent the digital. “His paintings draw from the aesthetics of early computer-generated imagery and computer-appropriated images, employing techniques such as the use of colour gradients to represent spatial relationships between forms,” says the gallery.

By building the layers of each artwork on a bright background, Jonathan’s works are consequently “reminiscent of both cell phone screens and film noir sets”. Each piece elegantly uses shadows and thoughtfully paired shades, so that they appear three dimensional, jumping out of the canvas. This is elevated by the jagged edges of objects featured, often household items, allowing the artworks to blur the boundary between being rendered or painted.

Within the exhibition, opening on 8 September to October 20, the mix of large-scale and medium-sized paintings will be hung on electric indigo painted walls, “a colour dominating the background space of many of his paintings,” the gallery explains. The paintings are also accompanied by sculptures Jonathan has made, objects taken from the canvas works: “The viewer is invited to navigate this voided space with a suspension of disbelief, disembodied between the virtual and real, where one projects oneself into an alternate reality.”