Ashlee Nicolle Ferlito
Stop Having a Boring Life, 2010
Oil on Canvas
12in x 10in
Tell Me What to Do
12x10in
Oil on Canvas
2011
Artist Statement
In my current work I explore the ways in which identity politics as well as issues of gender and sexuality relate to the history of painting and to other cultural image banks.
Small paintings of iconic objects are meticulously rendered and presented in juxtaposition to sculptural objects and large color stain paintings.
The works create an uncanny dialogue between the iconic and ironic in art as well as the indexical nature of images and qualities of handling and their relationships to each other within the history of image making. At times, embracing and alluding to certain painterly traditions, I’m also interested in redefining and refusing their pull. In these ways, the paintings act as a conduit: delivering a complicated meaning through context, pace and control.
I have an egalitarian appreciation and approach and don’t have a hierarchy within the different modes of working. In this respect I am interested in how the concept of labor, skill and investment translates to the viewer visually, specifically how the investment of time and perceived labor is understood and appreciated.
I am interested in the individual works having or giving a certain immediate understanding or pleasure. However, by placing them together I hope to create a dynamic between them, arriving at a different and intangible meaning through context. By placing a small painting of a tightly rendered object framed in a field of dark grey, next to a large scale, casually handled painting which engages a process of deliberate application of saturated color and chanced mark next to a sculpture of floor to ceiling silver tinsel hung in dense rows to create a glittering, reflective, rectangular column I hope to create an interaction between the works that encourages an experiential read, raising questions of value, reference, and identity.