Illustrations by Devlin Shea
Narrative and connection are ongoing themes in Devlin Shea’s work, also an interest in visualizing the role the subconscious plays in human relationships and in individual choices. The human ability to accept and attach meaning to an obviously fabricated world fascinates Shea both in art and in culture.
The New York-born Brooklynite now based out of Stockholm, Sweden often uses images of couples in her art. With two individuals overlapping, one can see the roles they take on, the non-verbal communication between them and the fact that although they are seen as a unit they still are having two separate experiences. As a metaphor, the couple is also a fitting one to address a struggle to live symbiotically, both with oneself and in the world.
Shea has also been exploring the morphology of public and private spaces as newer and more aggressive technologies are woven into our daily routines. She is intrigued by these new tools’ power to alter behavior and meaning. With our current level of technology consumption we are constantly distracted while simultaneously obsessed with connecting.
This drive is part of what she is examining in “I Googled How People Affect Each Other” where she uses the internet to find other images for phrases and human experiences, then recontextualize them in painted landscapes using gouache and charcoal on paper. There is an intimacy and fragility to these materials, which to the artist fits the task of personalizing Internet sourced imagery. The original searched phrase becomes each painting’s title and the text for an artist book, “Collecting Data and Reaching Out.”
The book consists of drawings done during the research process–fleeting glimpses of anonymous lives reinterpreted as something tactile, creating a souvenir of this transformation. In slowing down familiar tools and behaviors that now accompany web-based communication, the project was designed to give a human touch to these new cultural realities and explore the effects the scrambling of public and private space has on our lives. The book will be produced for the exhibition.
To see more of her work click here.