The explosive abstract portraiture of Los Angeles based artist Justin Bower is currently featured in a new exhibition at MOAH (Lancaster Museum of Art and History), “Thresholds”. Previously featured here on our blog and in Hi-Fructose Vol. 31, his digital-looking, hand-painted portraits constantly question how much we will allow technology to permeate and destruct our daily lives? Like a glitchy mirror image of ourselves, glued to our computers and mobile devices, the giant, anonymous faces that he paints are continuously broken up by neon colored markings and shapes. His “Thresholds” series is an extension of a series of portraits that first began with his piece titled “Spaceboy” in 2009, here ending with several new paintings created throughout 2015. Bower’s new additions to the series still deal with the contemporary, digitized subject, but move into different areas aesthetically. “It’s a mini retrospective, I suppose,” he said in an email to Hi-Fructose. “In many ways, my work from “The Humiliations” at Unix Gallery this past September, is an extension and diversion from the MOAH show. The fracturing of the human, doubling of sense organs, opening of the flesh, the violence to the stability of the subject are all ‘Humiliations’ to the autonomous and free willed human of the past, and are in both shows.” Coming up next, Bower is already working on some museum solo shows for 2016 at the University of Arizona and Cal Poly Pomona in California, as well as a new series with Unix Gallery in New York.
“Threshold” by Justin Bower will be on view in MOAH’s Main Gallery through January 24th, 2016.
