Taylor Chapin

Taylor Chapin

tmchapin@ucsd.edu

Instagram: @blackbearss

My work currently consists of large-scale oil paintings rooted in examining new forms of representation. This ongoing series explores various ways of covering/obscuring objects and bodies to address how subversion of the original form can create new forms of meaning and surface. The phrase “cover-up” has a variety of different meanings. To cover something up means to obscure it in some type of way, so it is unable to be seen in its purest state. This type of obfuscation can be generally innocuous, or it can be done with the intention to deceive. The overt meaning and symbolism imbued in a given object in its uncovered state is taken away when the object(s) are tampered with in any way from small bits and pieces being compromised to a state of total and complete redaction.

In addressing these various forms of concealment, the symbolism of the cloaked or covered object is explored to question how concealing the original form gives rise to misrepresentation and/or evokes new façades of allure. The paintings depict covered consumer goods with various patterned fabrics to abstract and re-evaluate the inherent symbolism imbued in the representational objects. In their altered state, the once recognizable forms are hidden to discuss American themes of commercialism, objectification, and the empty and deceptive promises of the free market under neoliberal capitalism . In re-imagining representation of object and form, perception versus deception play an important role about the underpinnings and buried implications of the visible as what is perceived may seek to deceive.

The obscuring of form through fabric seeks to represent the guise of the free market. The fabric can only temporarily mask the empty slogans and over-processed products that are being pushed on society as a means of deceptive distraction. The allure of the painted surface concurrently attracts and repels through saturated colors, vivid patterning, and unexpected fabric pairings, bordering on bad taste, as it relates to the complicated interdependency of the neoliberal free market and the public evoking the idea “can’t live with it, can’t live without it”. This series questions what it means to consume through an exploration of intentional ambiguity, to varying degrees, methodically deployed through painterly reproduction and repetition. The subliminal push to misrepresent extends as the paintings themselves never fully reveal what is being covered, an ornately wrapped empty box as a representation of the emptiness of endless consumption.