The Near and Bright Expanse

2022

acrylic paint, enamel paint, spray paint, polystyrene mixture on aluminum screen

Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama

The Near and Bright Expanse stretches across a seventy-foot-long gallery at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. Constructed from hundreds of feet of aluminum mesh, the installation forms a seemingly endless, atmospheric swath. The surface is scattered with popcorn ceiling texture and layers of bright yellow acrylic and spray paint, rendering the mesh simultaneously opaque and transparent. The work alternates visually, at times appearing smoky and dense, at others radiating a sense of growing lightness. It evokes the haze of collective disorientation, loss, and disruption experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, while also suggesting a progression toward the possibility of an expansive, more capacious future.