statement

"We shape our tools and our tools shape us."
Marshall Mcluhan

My art focusses on our world and the split of experiences that we have simultaneously through our perceptions of the "real" and the "virtual." These experiences have grown at an expansional rate as our technology both acts as a vehicle that binds us though global connection and the ability to annex our brains and yet creates a displacement in our physical lives. I use painting, a nonlinear yet simultaneously experienced medium to explore an abstract interpretation of our contemporary "landscape" or a more appropriately termed "visual scape". I create layers of information separated by literal coats of poured transparent medium. In between these layers are ridged hand stenciled spray painted lines. I am both removing the idea of a singular artists hand by referencing commercial and digitally designed signifiers in a very controlled and deliberate process but simultaneously make these virtual references material.

I use found and personal printed images as a tool to pull the viewer in through a marker of the "real" or familiar and then let them wonder through the nonsensical collapsing and ephemeral worlds with in the pieces. By compressing many layers together I reference the simultaneousness of the virtual and look at creating works that are nonlinear abstractions of our interactions with both the material and immaterial worlds. I attempt to create paintings of a "a place without space and the worlds in between".

bio

born: 1984, Kentucky

education

Ohio University BFA in painting 2006

selected awards/honors

Art Design Consultants, 2013 Art Comes Alive Best of Show, Cincinnati, Ohio

selected publications

2015 Manifest Gallery 4th International Painting Annual
2014 Booooooom February 2014, "Philip LaVelle" http://www.booooooom.com/2014/02/08/artist-painter-philip-lavelle/
Aeqai, February 2013, "Philip LaVelle at 1305 Gallery", by Jane Durrell http://aeqai.com/main/2013/02/philip-lavelle-at-1305-gallery/

selected solo or two-person exhibits

TBA, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2015
No Body Is Lonely, NKU Eva G. Farris Gallery, Highland Heights, Kentucky, 2014
Philip LaVelle New Work, 1305 Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2013

selected group shows

2014 Art Comes Alive, Art Design Consultants,Cincinnati, Ohio, 2014
Displaced One, Harvest Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2014
Fresh Paint, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2013
VISTA, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2013