Fragments and Memories
Image Left: I Was Looking at Your Window, Shawn Camp, 12x12 inches, acrylic on wood, 2022
Image Right: (detail) Out Back, Michael Villarreal, 50x80.75 inches, oil on canvas, 2022
Shawn Camp & Michael Villarreal
Exhibition Dates: March 4 – April 2, 2022
ICOSA Collective is proud to present Fragments and Memories: Shawn Camp and Michael Villarreal, an exhibition of recent paintings that reveal the connection between perception, materiality and the recollection and re-interpretation of past experience.
Michael Villarreal’s current paintings show the bare bones of the house he grew up in. The paintings only display a glimpse of the building process, enabling an opportunity to connect and envision its completion. Each painting was created within a week, allowing for alla prima and impasto techniques to produce abstract moments that, at times, never really feel finished. Through the excessive building and layering of paint, the house can transcend its original purpose and foster a new narrative while maintaining the basic visual familiarity.
Villarreal is a visual artist based in Lytton Springs, TX. In 2013, Villarreal received a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Texas State University in San Marcos, TX and a Master of Fine Arts in 2017 at the University of Nebraska. He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions nationwide. His work has been featured in several publications such as New American Paintings and Art Maze Magazine. In 2019, he was a recipient of the Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. Villarreal currently teaches at Texas State University in San Marcos, TX.
Shawn Camp’s newest paintings present contradicting geometric planes and paradoxical spatial relationships. Through unpredictable angles and ever-changing surfaces formed by numerous layers of translucent paint, he examines the mysteries of materiality, shape and color.
Shawn grew up in Coeur dʼ Alene, Idaho and completed an MFA in Painting and Printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has shown work in New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Dallas, along with solo and group shows in his home base of Austin, TX. His work has been featured at South by Southwest, ArtPrize, and New American Talent and is included in numerous public and private collections. Shawn’s paintings, videos and sound pieces exploit the effects of context and light on perception - contrasting the ephemeral nature of awareness with the illusion of constancy.
