Joseph Arnegger will be showing new paintings and sculpture in an exhibition titled MIGRATE at Greene Contemporary from December 12, 2007 through January 5, 2008. There will be an opening reception on Friday December 14 from 6 to 9 pm. The exhibition will continue through Saturday January 5.
Arnegger's new series of paintings called MIGRATE contain narrative elements that tell a history of his journeys up and down the 95 / 75 corridor between New England and Florida. He has repeated this trip several times every year of his life. This constant has given him a world of visual information in the form of roadside billboards, post cards and other experiences. It is not only the images but the "textures" that Arnegger imprints. He sometimes incorporates found objects into his work such as road signs that have been discarded or abandoned. For Arnegger these new paintings take him back to a time "when the road sign could tell you how far you had gone as well as sell you on the dream of travel-stained locations and destinations."
Arnegger's work synthesizes issues of realism and abstraction. Aspects of his work recall elements of sixties Pop art as well as some ideas of the nouveau réalisme or new realism in France of the same period. His work is romantic and nostalgic for a way of painting and a way of life that has vanished. Arnegger's images of popular culture from the past resonate in the culture of the present. While characters or figures in his paintings may appear iconic, for him the references are personal. He has "memories for people" that helped form who he is.
Arnegger is committed to gesture and to texture. He likes to "have a relationship with his materials." He "loves pushing paint around." For him "drawing is about illusion and paint is about the surface." He often starts a composition with paint or pencil using a circular mark that is an abstraction of a halo motif. It could be a nimbus or an egg shape or a form that reminds him of a cloud. "Clouds have a mystic quality" for him.
Arnegger has always been interested in film and television. He sometimes constructs his work by juxtaposing several panels together in a manner that resembles the "jump cut" or the way that unrelated stills are spliced next to each other in film that is being edited. He wants the viewer to craft a story that bridges the gap between his seemingly unrelated panels of painted images.
His paintings are objects. They are constructions. Arnegger uses materials such as found wood or industrial metals for the foundation of his paintings. These elements already have a history of their own. He does not want his work to look new. He wants them "to look like no one has touched them." This patina endows his new paintings with a presence that is complexly nuanced, richly layered and boldly powerful.
Born in Boston in 1969, Joseph Patrick Arnegger grew up in Connecticut, New York and Florida. He began painting at an early age and remembers spending time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and visiting artists' studios in the Hamptons not far from his grandparents' house in Montauk. He graduated from Ringling School of Art & Design in Sarasota in 1994.