Emily HerrGesell

Aren’t We Already Past This?

I find myself seeking to bring other individuals into my memory landscapes. Through painting and video I fulfill my own urgencies to express very personal notions and to make them palatable to others.

Nostalgia is very present in my life and therefore something I find myself obsessively trying to understand. It inherently speaks about a personal past. My work is the journey to finding my answers, in a space where others can come to their own conclusions and to be immersed in strange images, color palettes and landscapes.

Painting is a more personal way in which I can interact with my subject matter. When working with images of my own past I process in layers not unlike the way someone would layer images in photoshop. I tend to add my own distortions to “reality” and try to mar the concept of identity to the figures that I paint.

My videos work to place the viewer in a disorienting landscape. The setting shifts in and out of focus using transparencies of video and sound and the movement of the two on top of one another. With most of my video works I remove the viewer to give a slightly displaced feeling even if the action that is occurring is intimate, such as cooking food or walking through a well traveled space. Within these different working strategies with the material, and my own instincts with painting and video, I try to achieve both formats of vagueness and specificity through detail and the lack there of throughout a work.

My driving point in my practice is to achieve the concept that others external to myself will be able to make an understanding and connection with my most personal spaces.