Patte Loper How to Stay Alive in the Woods

June 20 to July 27, 2024

IMAGES FROM THE EXHIBITION
OTHER AVAILABLE WORK

Platform Gallery presents new work by Patte Loper for her  fourth solo exhibition at the gallery. Long been interested in the interface between the natural and the constructed world, Patte begins her paintings by first creating models made from pieced-together scraps of found materials such as discarded cardboard, cloth, sticks, string and putty. She then makes observational paintings using the models as subjects for portraits. Painting the image of the model frontally, surrounded by a landscape of woods, the observed objects are presented as though for examination. She intentionally refers to classical portraiture or botanical studies done by naturalists before the use of photography, a time when painting was used to document, to classify, and to communicate ideas and images that would otherwise remain unknown. Patte seeks to utilize sensory experience such as the movement of the paint, the strangeness of the objects, and the familiarity of the woods as a means to explore flexible and idiosyncratic forms by plumbing hidden weights, gravitational pulls and unexpected connections within the subject matter.

Patte received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and has exhibited her work in New York, Boston, Chicago, and Milan. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Image: I Want to Believe In Everything You Believe, 2012, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches