ABOUT PETRA CORTRIGHT
PETRA CORTRIGHT, the 29-year-old Californian who has emerged from the art world’s post-internet sensationalism of the mid-2000s, shares this affinity with the founder of IMPRESSIONISM. And beyond botanicals, her current practice is increasingly aligned with Impressionist ideas, but for the 21st-century set. While Monet and his male counterparts reflected on the experience of seeing in late 19th-century France, Cortright does just this in the present moment, reflecting on the digital landscape.
Her most recent works, now on view in concurrent exhibitions at San Francisco’s Ever Gold [Projects] and Berlin’s Société, are evidence of this: digital paintings filled with flowers and water lilies that are instinctively reminiscent of Monet. Both shows illuminate Cortright’s multi-pronged process. She begins by sourcing imagery online, employing a sort of digital impasto technique to make what she calls “a mother file,” which she then manipulates and prints onto various substrates—such as aluminum panels, sheets of linen, rag paper—which are layered to create the final painting, varying in opacity and translucency. “Each layer represents a painting permutation, making the combinations nearly infinite,” Cortright tells me. And as was the case with Impressionism, visible brushstrokes are a vital element of her new work. “I want the viewer to see the same brush strokes in the different versions and on the different substrates,” she explains. “All the physical pieces are unique, but there are deep elements of a digital process that I would never want to hide or remove—instead they are celebrated.”
Rather than painting en plein air, as was the Impressionist way, Cortright works doggedly indoors, online, in prolonged sessions that are physically challenging. Whereas Monet spent his days ensconced in lush blooms and greenery, Cortright’s garden is the internet; she observes it, not critically, but to capture fleeting changes in color, the effects of moving interfaces, and the backlight of screens. “I wear gamer glasses when I paint, because I paint in sessions of about 12 hours at a time,” she explains. “I always need to flip them up to check colors as I go, because they make everything yellow and block the blue.” At Ever Gold [Projects], works such as deicideCHEMICAL_records.tbl (2015) elucidate her rich sensibility for light.
SOURCE: ARTSY.NET