Shanti Shea An
Split screen, double vision
27 May – 21 June

Split screen, double vision extends my ongoing investigation into multiplicity in painting. In each work, the singular painted surface, which invites an intimate encounter between viewer and object, carries multiple levels of representation. Duplicated images appear alongside pairs of objects or people to suggest that something can be two things at once. This can also take the form of an averted gaze, a shadow, or an image that has been cropped or obscured.

My work engages with states of suspended recognition, where subjects may seem familiar but remain unknowable. I see this as a constant negotiation between what a painting seems to “say” and how it simultaneously retreats from view or comprehension. In this sense, painting allows me to rename or reconfigure what I see, to attend to the visual information that continually confounds me.

These paintings are not intended as representations of linear narratives, but rather they are concerned with a desire for narrative as an enclosed, reassuring structure. Forms and figures shift, search for stability, and remain on the move. Alongside this restlessness, I also find myself returning to the stillness—and silence—of an image and its capacity to momentarily fix things in place.