The walls that provide a refuge to some by definition exclude others, and those we exclude
hover like unseen ghosts. Events and pressures beyond our personal control
threaten eviction. It is fashionable in some circles to speak of experience that has been written on the body.
In these paintings, the body itself is a glyph or an alchemical sigil. Through iteration after
iteration Garner’s graphic bodies defy easy categorization, suggesting an uncontrolled transit
through inner space only partially self-directed. These are paintings that peek behind the curtain to reveal neither conspiracy nor criminality,
but struggle. Contested selves contort and cavort through a landscape of pure interiority. Our belonging in the world, to other people, to family, to nation, to humanity, is symbiotically
linked with place. This symbiosis depends on the fiction that house and home and self are stable
and permanent, that a house provides durable walls within which each can construct a self, a first
person singular, capable of belonging and excluding. These paintings depict the space beyond that fiction.
Click any image for title and dimensions, a larger image, and detail
shots. The images on this page are not presented to scale with one another.
angiereed@thegarners.net