Anne Neukamp

Anne Neukamp depicts various symbols from a rich milieu of colloquial visual fields within her paintings. Extracting visually arresting motifs such as emojis, power buttons or inbox envelopes, the artist mines aesthetic trends within internet culture, signage, advertising and cartoon imagery, reproducing these icons in her playful painterly style. Working with a mixture of oils, egg tempera and acrylic on either canvas or linen, these symbols undergo a thorough translation into the arena of painting, shedding, if not totally losing their origins within digital and commercial design. These tokens that Neukamp selects are stretched and enlarged on canvas, painted with immense detail to light and surface, affording them a sense of care not usually reserved for everyday imagery and objects. These hyper precise symbols commonly sit amongst a more texturally rich, abstract background, creating a visual dissonance or sense of confusion within the composition. Working in this Duchampian, somewhat puckish register, Neukamp’s paintings firmly destabilize ideas of ‘serious subjects’ within painting, urging viewers to reconsider the semantic weight of these everyday signifiers. ...