Austin Eddy: Immutable Traveller (Cat. Knust Kunz Gallery Editions)

Austin Eddy’ s painterly oeuvre formulates contradictions, drawing on Cubist traditions and seeking a balance between figuration and abstraction. His figurative elements fold into nocturnal landscapes, buildings become isolated portraits of seemingly claustrophobic spaces, floating clouds resemble bulbous fingers– and all stand at once for portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. Austin Eddy’ s work references American modernism both formally and conceptually, yet there is something beyond that, which the artist describes as follows: “ I think the paintings are constantly trying to navigate a road between reality and abstraction. I am interested in exploring the limits of how far can you stretch the conversation between the two. The paintings are rooted in real life narratives but not necessarily tied to representing the world truly. To keep them tied to the earth I try to use time. Light plays a crucial role in understanding how these images work. Not only in the sense of time of the day, but also addressing the possible length of time something could be happening. Trying to capture an afternoon in a moment, or the franticness of flight in the stillness of a painting is exciting to me. Because I have pushed to simplify the language in the paintings I find it important that they are like pulled back to the natural world through the color of time.”