Anna Gregor
@anna__gregor
The potential distance, violence and harmony between the poles of body, mind, self and other are at the heart of my work. I explore the problem of moving through the world by creating quietly complex paintings that don’t stand still, in which space shifts, categories blur, bodies meld and splinter. I dissolve the boundaries within and between the bodies my paintings depict––and, by analogy, between my body as I paint and the viewer’s body as they look. My paintings ask the viewer to relinquish their point of view, to see from another’s perspective, to think in another’s mind, thereby destabilizing the concepts of “self” and “other.” To this end, I’ve been studying the science of optics, the psychology of sight and the history of art and aesthetics, particularly the perspectives used in Byzantine and Mughal art, drawing on current and past ideas to make paintings that momentarily collapse the distance between artist and viewer, body and mind, body and other body.