Justin Bower’s abstracted, fractured faces maintain a sense of intimacy. In his latest oil on canvas works, Bower’s evolved this approach with new, startling “glitches.” He's current part of the group show "Los Angeles Painting: Formalism to Street Art" at Bruno David Gallery in Missouri, and he was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
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.
Los Angeles based artist Justin Bower’s larger than life oil paintings feature anonymous subjects that appear digitized, but are painstakingly hand-painted. Through their expressive, glitchy faces, first covered in Hi-Fructose Vol 31, Bower examines our close relationship with technology. In our 2014 interview with the artist, he said, "My work is foremost about the destabilization of the contemporary subject in an increasing control society, and often I use the digital realm as the environment to place them in. It’s almost an ontological build up from scratch, building a new idea of who we are." On September 10th, Bower will debut a long-awaited new series at UNIX Gallery in New York with his exhibit "The Humiliations".