June 18 – July 23, 2011
Downstairs Back BOX
The Clearing
Joey Fauerso

“Over the last few years I have become interested in the dominant themes of Romanticism in the literary and visual arts, and how these themes, including nature, imagination, erotic love, and the development of self, are influenced and in many cases defined by gender. A lot of my work attempts to re-frame the historical gendering of nature as feminine. In a recent series of watercolors on paper, anthropomorphized landscapes depict intimate acts of dominance and submission, dissolving the boundaries between “male” and “female” “inside” and “outside”.

“My most recent paintings, solitary male nudes that are simultaneously obliterated and realized by their environments, pay satirical homage to the Romantic cult of individualism while introducing an eroticism usually reserved for the female body. In addition to my works on paper, I also make videos and animations, and most recently videos combing live action and animation. “Me Time” (8:27, 2010) records me passionately making out with a series of puppets, including a policeman, a firefighter, and a construction worker. In “Me Time” the object of my affection is literally an extension and projection of self, reflecting many of the highly narcissistic Romantic descriptions of erotic love, relationships often defined by woman becoming an extension of man, or the female being metaphorically subsumed into the male.

“Similarly “The Clearing”(3:20 2010), a video combining animation and live action, reverses many of the established stereotypes concerning nature and gender. In the video a Svengali-like female character plays her flute, seducing a young naked man into a forest clearing, his erratic movements seemingly controlled by her music.

“My recent work has mostly taken the form of large and small watercolors on paper, animation, and video. My process for the animations involves videotaping my subjects, breaking down the video into an image sequence, making paintings from that sequence, and finally reanimating and altering the paintings into a second video. The animations are the result of the original video footage being “filtered” through an extremely slow and subjective process that mirrors the physicality of painting, as well as the physical and psychological complexities of my subjects’ performances. The paintings and animations are often exhibited together, juxtaposing two representations of a single event: one organized spatially, and the other temporally.”

-Joey Fauerso

Joey Fauerso lives and works San Antonio with her family. Recent shows include ‘Act Natural’ at Western Exhibitions in Chicago, ‘Four Animations’ at the McNay Museum of Art, and ‘Decoy’ at Parsons School of Art Paris. Fauerso is represented by David Shelton Gallery and is an Assistant Professor of Art at Texas State University.