Avery Singer’s paintings explore the limits of the medium. Instead of painting with brushes, she instead uses SketchUp, a 3-D modelling software popular with architects and engineers, to create digital compositions that are then projected and airbrushed on canvas.
In the past two years, Singer has introduced colour to her grisaille palette. The candy- coloured Calder (Saturday Night) (2017) is presented in the Arsenale, along with a group of paintings that contrast with the muted, semi-abstract pictures on view in the Central Pavilion. While playing with the limits of representation, Singer’s ongoing quest to expand the possibilities of painting also battles against reductive theories of and assumptions about artists’ gender.
By portraying gender-neutral visages and non-sexualised shapes, Singer highlights identity ambiguity by reducing facial features to a series of lines, grids, and geometric forms.
