Shawn Huckins: The Birds Will Sing
George Billis Gallery // April 10, 2021 - May 08, 2021
May 03, 2021 | in Painting
It has been close to two years since we last covered the work by Shawn Huckins and after years of talking about the erasure of history through figure-based works, he is currently presenting a body of work revolving around landscape tradition.
, borrows the title of an old Cajun folk song, and just the sweet-sounding title conceals a murder ballad, Denver-based artist is disturbing the breathtaking landscapes with dark statements about contemporary love.
Living in the age of captions, memes, and social network communication, Huckins creates a visual bridge between the classic American paintings by 19th-century masters and the way we share and/or absorb information in the present day. Sourced from public domain and museum collections, Bierstadt's or The Hudson River School's iconic works are here repurposed as mere backdrops for misspelled and abbreviated statements evoking the familiar emotional states. "The handwritten text phrases I’m using to combine with the landscapes are more specific to the struggles of love, as I feel everyone can have a connection in some manner," the artist explained to