ANASTASIA KIMMETT: The Nature of Reality

DIEHL GALLERY 
presents

ANASTASIA KIMMETT: The Nature of Reality
07.20.23 - 08.13.23
 
Opening Reception:
Thursday, July 20th • 5–8 pm
155 West Broadway, Jackson Hole

For this new collection, Anastasia Kimmett references photographs of places that never existed.

Before building her mixed-media paintings, Kimmett constructs miniature environments. The artist creates back-drops and paper props to construct the imaginary places and atmospheres that she wants to explore.  As if they are tiny film and television sets, these dioramas are designed, built, dressed, lit, photographed, and later torn down to make room for new places.

The photographs are the foundation from which new paintings begin. The dominant shapes are marked onto paper using liquid mediums. Other elements and nuances are edited in and out by adding and subtracting a variety of mixed media to suggest details and tones that weren’t present in the original staged setting.

At some point in the process, each image is cut into pieces. The fragments are shifted then spliced back into a complete picture revealing its tiny components and details. As in past projects, this dissection is intended to draw attention to the miniature building blocks hidden within the larger picture. In this series, it is also a reference to the fragmented images of three-dimensional worlds on two-dimensional screens which intend to take us, as viewers, to unreal places in our dreams, ideas, imaginations, and memories.

“I have referenced photographs of nature in prior work. This new method allows me to design and play with nature; to step outside the rules of physics and reality in the three-dimensional version before I flatten it. It also adds another layer of ‘create-destroy-create’, which is a continued theme in my work.”