This new series of paintings continues my interest in technical images and the mysterious power they emit by processing and thinking through their production using various painting modalities. These works tease apart the mechanics of photography to assert the subjective experience of composing pictures on canvas with materials that are fluid and responsive to touch. In this way I aim to find my own way of Understanding images and the world they purport to depict by reintroducing my humanity into the process of their making. The photographs come from a variety of sources, ones I have taken, advertising, and journalistic platforms. In removing them from where they are found they become unmoored from their context and freed to produce new associations and significance. Mechanical reproduction serves, in this case, not to make the dispersion of imagery more efficient but represents a way to differently consider the object, foregrounding a perspective outside of my own.
Rather than completely relinquish expressive traces of its making to the industrial universe that is required to animate these pictures, I seek to maintain a foothold in their creation. If the pixel, grain, and CRT lines are traces of the of the intentions and subjectivity embedded within the image then I seek to reintroduce the slipperiness and nod to my own hand by synthesizing these two representational strategies while not eliminating their distinction in the process.
Luke Harnden was born in New Orleans and raised in Texas. Harnden was exposed at an early age to the Houston arts scene, encouraging his early pursuits at the Houston and later Dallas High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. His early paintings used both representational and abstract methods, combining imagery sourced from consumer culture with modernist modes of painterly expression. In 2012 he cofounded the discursive artist run space known as Beefhaus in Dallas TX. His artistic practice underwent a shift as a student of John Pomara at the University of Texas at Dallas which incorporated silkscreen, digital photo editing, and the use of flatbed printers and scanners. At this time Harnden begins to explore the relationship between the human body and the mediated image’s technical form. A subsequent 2015 exhibition at Barry Whistler gallery introduced a linear motif which would become a consistent theme for the artist. Using common hand cut painters tape as a recursive stencil that generates arbitrary visual patterns, Harnden referred to these early works as “algorithms”.
Continually adding to his visual vocabulary, beginning to experiment again with representation and the photographic image Harnden fuses his linear technique with the use of digitally plotted stencils. Harnden continued exploring this mode of working while pursuing his master’s at the California Institute of the Arts in 2017 where his interest in considering photography through the lens of painting continued. Images would become for the artist, not only constructions built for the purpose of depicting underlying technical structure but carriers of specific significance and energetic emotional connection. The multifaceted nature of these potent images was the subject of his exhibition at Sean Horton Presents in 2019. “Ritual Images” gave examples of the artist’s various Strategies of layering.
In some cases, the images were literally overlapped creating a nebulous mass of form. In others, a single image could be made to transmit multiple things simultaneously, pointing to an abstraction through the layering of meaning if not form. Harnden continues to push the boundaries of his techniques and use of materials as a continued interest in negotiating the relationship between the body and machine. Considering the lively affect of the photographic image, as well as, the technical structure which support those images, without naturalizing the loss of distinction between the two.
Luke Harnden is currently living and working in Los Angeles. His practice spans both technological and classical mediums, exploring intersection of mediated realities and embodied experience. Harnden earned his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. His work has been exhibited at Barry Whistler Gallery (Dallas), Sean Horton Presents (New York), Old Jail Art Center (Albany) and Nick Kochornswasdi Gallery (Los Angeles).
