Details:

This painting contrasts the depiction of a cartoonish character in cool blue tones with chalky black-and-white markings. Rejecting the material finish of traditional painting, Gibson takes advantage of the immediacy of his pastel medium—as well as its directness of line and rich, vibrant color—which can be smudged, blurred or otherwise obscured.
Unframed
Signed

① Artwork:

Scramble Your Jets

This painting contrasts the depiction of a cartoonish character in cool blue tones with chalky black-and-white markings. Rejecting the material finish of traditional painting, Gibson takes advantage of the immediacy of his pastel medium—as well as its directness of line and rich, vibrant color—which can be smudged, blurred or otherwise obscured.

Alex Gibson’s densely-layered compositions fuse various source imagery onto abstract backgrounds. He creates artworks that have an immediacy thanks to his smudged, blurred, or obscured materials, choosing to eschew legibility in favor of a purely aesthetic experience.

Specs:

13 inches
18 inches

③ Artist:

Alex Gibson

Alex Gibson’s densely-layered compositions fuse source imagery from advertising, vernacular photography, film, animation and art history. Rendered in chalky pastels made by the artist, Gibson superimposes various parts of appropriated figures onto abstract backgrounds. His works have an immediacy from the pastel that allows a directness of line, richness of color, and a mutable surface that can get smudged, blurred, or obscured. Clashing elements occur throughout Gibson’s work—humor and romance, seriousness and folly, high and low art—without placing value judgments. Through the rejection of pure image production and the slippage around a picture’s original ownership, Gibson’s work is dissident. He rejects the trappings of legibility and works with images to appraise them on their terms.

Alex Gibson was born in 1991 in Northampton, MA. He received his MFA from Yale School of Art in New Haven, CT (2019) and his BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, NY (2013).

His solo show “Super Darling,” debuted at M+B, Los Angeles in October 2022 and his first solo show in New York will take place at Someday in May 2023.

Alex Gibson:
Scramble Your Jets, 2023
Pastel, chalk, acrylic on panel
18.0 × 13.0 inches /