Terminator, solo exhibition
The Porch Gallery - Minneapolis, MN
July 9 - August 6, 2021
terminator
noun
ter·mi·na·tor | \ ˈtər-mə-ˌnā-tər \
1. A person or thing that terminates.
2. Someone who exterminates (especially
someone whose occupation is the extermination of troublesome insects).
3. The
transitional area from light to shadow on an object or figure.
4. The
line between the day side and the night side of a planet (also referred to
as the “twilight zone”).
5. A DNA sequence which
causes RNA transcription to cease and an mRNA transcript
to break off.
6. An artificial
intelligence machine, created to destroy humans (after the 1984 film The Terminator).
The paintings included in Terminator were made between October 2020 through June 2021. For the past few years, I have been preoccupied with uncanny phenomena in the realm of duplicates, shadow selves, reflections, and alternate realities. I also watch a lot of movies and my painting compositions are heavily influenced by, if not pulled directly from, directorial compositions from horror and science fiction. The films referenced in this exhibition include John Carpenter’s The Thing (Gleam), Halloween and Goosebumps: The Haunted Mask (Watching), Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Emotion (Caught), and Vampyr (Version 2). Funnily enough, none of the works in my show Terminator take cues from the movie The Terminator, the title comes more from the idea of a terminator as a transitional point rather than the human destroying AI machine. But I do think there are undeniable thematic overlaps, and I love the franchise, and I can’t not use this as an opportunity to indulge myself by spending a lot of time re-watching and pausing over and over to take screenshots. The following are six drawings from James Cameron’s The Terminator, made the week after my show opened at The Porch Gallery. Think of this series as a sequel: Terminator 2.