Press Release - "After Class" by Landon Pointer
Landon Pointer
”Two T’s”
Acrylic, wax, oil, and vinyl emulsion on canvas
51 x 43.25 inches
2022
pt.2
After Class
a solo exhibition by
Landon Pointer
Opening Reception
Saturday, September 10th, 2022
6-9pm Public Opening
Showing Through October 10th, 2022
info@part2gallery.com
pt. 2 Gallery is pleased to present After Class, Oakland based painter Landon Pointer’s first exhibition with the gallery. Richly textured and layered with overlapping imagery, Pointer’s paintings convene nostalgic references and touchpoints from the artist’s childhood with a painting process that incorporates a range of techniques from airbrushing to AI imaging software. The resulting paintings within After Class feel hyper contemporary as figures pulled from different reaches of the internet collide, all the while retaining a familiar haziness that gives the sense of distant collective memory.
Curiosity defines Pointer’s painting styles which morph with each work or oftentimes are all incorporated together within the same painting. The artist builds up thick impastos of modeling paste, spraying airbrushed pigment over the textured surface, the diffused softness of the airbrush contrasting with the stiff peaks and valleys of the built up facade. These textures are contrasted by large fields of color, or figures rendered in careful detail.
Despite their purely analog feel, in conceptualizing this exhibition the artist began experimenting with an AI image making software which provided renderings from the artist’s provided prompts. What began as a way to imagine certain ideas has evolved into another component of the artist’s layered process, constructing renderings that occasionally become translated quite literally to canvas, or in other times are augmented with a further layering of images. Instead of balking at the prospect of incorporating digital ways of working as many artists do, Pointer has fully embraced this as yet another tool in his bag, seeing the use of the AI software as a true collaboration–the artist and computer going back and forth in the creation of images and their translation to canvas.
Landon Pointer
”Air Ball”
Oil, acrylic, vinyl emulsion, and modeling paste on canvas
60 x 72 inches
2022
Speaking to the exhibition’s title of After Class, the figures within these works connect with a childhood nostalgia, those moments when you take a noisy bus home after school to find peace in a snack and some bad tv, a time for both relaxation and personal exploration as young people define their interests and proclivities outside of a structured environment. Pointer’s subject matter is as wide reaching as the artist’s voracious appetite for technique–ranging from the softness of claymation figures pulled from MTV’s iconic late 90’s / early 2000’s tv show Celebrity Deathmatch, or the ghostly figure of a doberman, it’s muscular frame and sharp contoured ears blurred by the airbrush’s spray.
Just as the solitary act of painting allows us to mine our past and unearth memories and connections that we might not have previously seen, a conversation with the artist’s mother had him reminiscing on the collages they made together, vision and dream boards, or the mixtape covers and adorned graduation cap that defined the artist’s aesthetics and accomplishments. Pointer’s paintings bring these early creative explorations full circle, despite a process that has evolved and grown just as the artist has, there still remains that refuge of finding joy and solace in the act of splicing together imagery, reconstructing new narratives through the reassembly of the past.