[cont’d]…Subjective presence here is modeled as an editorial consideration, a simple digression of choice. Like a synecdoche—or a loop—Andrew Falkowski’s work in Light/Industry/Coating circles around the constructs that administer, rank and project subjective significance through various broad based databases that bind decontextualized horizons.

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Andrew Falkowski (American, b. 1973) in Washington D.C and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2003. He lives and works in Chicago, Illinois and teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Northwestern University. He is represented by Rosamund Felsen Gallery in Los Angeles, California. In 2011 Andrew was one of five featured artists in Chicago Art Magazine’s article, “Artists You Should Know: Top Picks”.

Recent shows include his fifth collaboration with Karl Erickson, Architecture and Morality at The Suburban in Chicago, Study for Midwest Appropriation at the Hyde Park Art Center, Michelle Grabner: Innova Survey at Innova in Milwaukee, Post-Op at Mixed Greens in New York, and One Way then Another at Box 13 in Houston. Andrew will be exhibiting his fifth solo show at Rosamund Felsen Gallery in January 2015.

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Click here for Andrew Falkowski’s CV

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Paris London Hong Kong interviewed Andrew Falkowski in October 2014:

What motivates your practice?

I’m genuinely interested in making things. It’s basically how I process the world. I like how painting is tethered to the past, but that people are always producing a combination of ideas that keeps process engaged.

What is your methodology? Do you  start conceptually, intuitively or otherwise?

Usually I start with an impulse. I’m usually considering what I haven’t seen, what people aren’t doing, and consider why that is. From there, I consider how I can fill that gap and what that might imply. In the past I would start conceptually. I’d make a model of thought and then produce work that embodied it. This show is a fundamental switch for me. In this instance, I’ve started to consider the effect of materials AS the content. This isn’t strictly formal, though. I’m still choosing materials because they embody a gap in discourse….I don’t dabble in intuition much…I get pretty bored by the assumptions within intuition that people don’t examine.

The look of your work has changed a lot over the years. Why have you opted for stylistic fluidity?

I want to inhabit a sensibility. I move around because it creates the effect I want. Besides that, I don’t really control what I’m doing. If I did, I woulda stuck with graphic design and probably had a better wardrobe. The impulse stems from an irrational drive. I think about painters who have a process that is more important than the ‘image’.

Would you say that the works in Light/Industry/Coating are more or less conceptually driven than your earlier work? 

The show is conceptually driven in that I see a lot of material ignored. I mill around on DIY’r and paint contractor chat rooms online a lot, so I’m hearing about certain materials that don’t get discussed much elsewhere. There are new painting materials that aren’t really sold in Art Stores and isn’t used as fine are material, generally. This to me is a gap in knowledge and it exhibits the often narrow view of contemporary practice. Don’t get me wrong, many people use alternative materials. I just think painting discourse can get reductive. I’m bored by it generally, so I’m looking for ways to produce engaged difference. If painting is a model of thought, I want to be apart of propositions that produce difference. But surface is always where the action is. If the surface isn’t engaging, then ideas, history, subjectivity, intuition, is irrelevant….But that comes down to taste and sensibility too, so it’s tricky.