Foxy Production is pleased to announce “human sheep brain “alice in wonderland” Americana”, Petra Cortright’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. Cortright presents a new series of large digital paintings on aluminum and linen, including one triptych. In muted tones, her abstracted landscapes portray aquatic gardens, buffeted by wind, with dark clouds hovering overhead. The artist subtly animates her autumnal scenes with marks; brushstrokes, and fields of black, blue, and gray.

While Cortright’s new works channel a number of Modernist painting styles, their production has most in common with Action Painting. She works intuitively, often at speed, combining digital painting tools with images and textures sourced from the Internet. Her works’ uncanny resemblance to oil painting is undercut by their innate connection to the electronic screen and the digital world it projects. 

With their subdued, seasonal moods, they may reflect the broader social climate we are navigating today, although the Fluxus-like elements of chance and improvisation in Cortright’s practice preclude them proposing any singular narrative. Cortright has said:  “I always try to introduce a somewhat random process into my work. Sometimes I’ll insert lines of poetry into searches on Google images. I try to put weird words together to try and bring up things I didn’t know I was looking for."* 

*From: McKinnon, Julian. “Bring me the weird.” artnews NEW ZEALAND. Spring 2017: 82-85. 

CREDITS
Photography: Mark Woods.

• Lesser, Casey and Scott Indrisek. "The 15 New York Shows You Need to See This September." Artsy Magazine. 30 Aug. 2017. Web.
• Cascone, Sarah. "Here Is Every Single New York Gallery Show That You Need to (Somehow) See This September." Artnet. 7 Sept. 2017. Web.
• "Goings On About Town: Petra Cortright." The New Yorker. 2 Oct. 2017: 6.