Comfortcore Sculptural Paintings
Comfortcore Sculptural Paintings
Gina Beavers
Gina Beavers
Over the past 15 years, I have re-imagined images that friends and strangers uploaded to social media by building up heavy acrylic surfaces to create my paintings. My subjects have included food photos, make-up tutorials, bodybuilder selfies and memes. In my newest body of work—the Comfortcore Sculptural Paintings—I have begun making three-dimensional works with materials derived from the world of sculpture: epoxies, resins and foam coats. Using screenshots of household goods that were advertised to me on social media alongside photos of consumer goods I find on Google shopping or Amazon, I create mostly abstract photo collages in photoshop to work from. The final works retain the elements of photorealism and relief from my earlier works, but the Comfortcore Sculptural Paintings now without figurative or representative elements, fully incorporate new patterned elements and braided textures.
I see my role as an artist is to be completely honest about what I’m looking at. Just as a realist painter 200 years ago might have set themself up in a field to depict the views around them, I have spent more than a decade mining images from the second world in which we increasingly live. Over the years people have questioned my use of three dimensions to recreate photographic images from social media—citing the flatness of screens. My answer is that the online world does not seem flat to me—rather, it feels like a rapidly beating heart. I’ve seen the first pictures of friend’s babies there, I’ve kept in touch with otherwise remote family there. Political uprisings have begun, the vanity and shamelessness of world leaders has been on display, bad faith actors have infiltrated it with misinformation to bring countries to their knees. Screens may be flat, but the online world feels very dimensional to me.
I call these works Comfortcore for the textures of the pillows and blankets I am depicting—but also as a reference to the role retail therapy has started to play in the online experience. This project will consist of a series of sculptural paintings whose imagery will be photo-surreal-abstractions, steeped in the language of online retail product photography and photoshop collage. The fabrication processes will utilize epoxies, resins, foam coats—materials that could lead me down different paths in the making in terms of tools and methods of sculpting, perhaps even lead to collaborating with others on fabrication. I want to expand my investigation into these sculptural methods. The project will manifest as a body of work shown in a public, not for profit space accessible to the community.
Painting & Printmaking, Sculpture, Visual Arts
2026
About Gina Beavers
West Orange, NJ
GINA BEAVERS, (B. 1974, ATHENS, GREECE; LIVES/WORKS in THE ORANGES,NJ), has presented solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1 in New York (2019), Neuer Essener Kunstverein in Essen, Germany (2021), Marianne Boesky, New York (2020,2022,2024); Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels (2023); Various Small Fires, Seoul (2021), among others. Her work has been included in group presentations at the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica – Palazzo Barberini, Venice; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; the MACRO Museum, Milan; the Mazovian Contemporary Art Museum, Radom, Poland: the Schlossmuseum Linz, Austria; Frans Hals Museum, Netherlands; Flag Art Foundation, New York;, among others. Her shows have been reviewed in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Frieze, Artforum, Art in America among others. She is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum, the Kistefos Museum in Norway, the ICA Miami, MOCA Los Angeles, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Perez Museum Art Museum Miami, FL; RISD Museum, Providence, RI and Deji Art Museum, Nanjing, China. Her work is included in two surveys that opened in November 2024, The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2020 at the MCA Chicago and Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968 at MOCA Los Angeles.
GINA BEAVERS, (B. 1974, ATHENS, GREECE; LIVES/WORKS in THE ORANGES,NJ), has presented solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1 in New York (2019), Neuer Essener Kunstverein in Essen, Germany (2021), Marianne Boesky, New York (2020,2022,2024); Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels (2023); Various Small Fires, Seoul (2021), among others. Her work has been included in group presentations at the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica – Palazzo Barberini, Venice; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; the MACRO Museum, Milan; the Mazovian Contemporary Art Museum, Radom, Poland: the Schlossmuseum Linz, Austria; Frans Hals Museum, Netherlands; Flag Art Foundation, New York;, among others. Her shows have been reviewed in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Frieze, Artforum, Art in America among others. She is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum, the Kistefos Museum in Norway, the ICA Miami, MOCA Los Angeles, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Perez Museum Art Museum Miami, FL; RISD Museum, Providence, RI and Deji Art Museum, Nanjing, China. Her work is included in two surveys that opened in November 2024, The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2020 at the MCA Chicago and Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968 at MOCA Los Angeles.