Preview, Jim Bobick, Freestyle, June 26 - July 22, 2008

Freestyle Exhibition Preview
Jim Bobick

Artist's Statement

This series of paintings and drawings deals with subject - object relationships. I'm interested in how a subject perceives an object (how a viewer understands a painting) and the experience created as a result of that interaction. In the same way a psychologist might use an ink blot test to uncover the unrealized, I use abstract forms to bring to the surface in the viewer subjective interpretation. My interest lies in the meaning a viewer brings to a piece of art; my aim is to explore the idea that a painting alone holds no meaning, but is created once a subject is introduced. This stresses the importance of both subject and object and shifts the focus of the work on an interaction between the two.

On the surface, my work takes itself less seriously. From a purely aesthetic point of view, I consider my work a quirky explosion of color and form. I use floating, organic, playful, biomorphic mutations to create thought provoking compositions that allude to the familiar but represent nothing in particular. In an attempt to keep the work open to interpretation, the titles are abstract as well. Lifted from the air, they are random bits and pieces of conversations I over-heard on a walk through the city streets of downtown New York City.