Using stills from early propaganda films or frontier paintings as a basis, the layered paintings of Joshua Hagler deconstruct our history. Each work goes through several iterations, distorting and removing previous layers to arrive at something new entirely. The explorations become both visceral and introspective in this process.
“This current body of work draws inspiration from Lethe, the Greek mythological river of forgetting,” a recent statement says. “It was said that one drinks from Lethe before being reborn, losing most or all memory of the past. German philosopher, Heidegger interpreted Lethe not as a simple accident of forgetting, but as a ‘concealment of being.’ The task for Heidegger was ‘unconcealment,’ in turn Hagler sets to uncover personal truths by examining America’s cultural amnesia and psychological repression.”
See more of the artist’s recent work below.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bh9Wf3SBfsd/?taken-by=haglerjosh
Using the Mongol zurag style of painting, 
In Oliver Vernon's new abstract works at an upcoming KIRK Gallery show, the artist abandons collage entirely and pushes his work forward only using acrylics. "Brushing Away the Veil," starting on Nov. 2, represents a new body of work and direction for the Brooklynite. There’s another new component to the works, as well, as Vernon says “is the excavation of buried paint layers through sanding. Since many of these pieces have had numerous stages of accumulation, they were like gold mines of hidden color.”
With "Dimensionality," 