Not That Broken

An Exhibition of Recent Mixed Media Work

Arts & Leisure Gallery | February 27 – April 4, 2021

Arts+Leisure is excited to announce Not That Broken, an exhibition of recent mixed media work by Travis Lindquist. Reflecting a turn in the artist’s practice from figurative painting towards a more atmospheric, deconstructed approach, many of the works include photographs from the artist’s past overlaid with psychologically suggestive gestural marks and painted passages, which work to highlight or alternatingly obfuscate certain pictorial elements. Lindquist emphasizes the importance of this “discovery through redaction” in his practice, and throughout the works on display traces of absent, unseen forms and emotional energy often appear more palpable than the overt imagery. Lonely skies, empty beaches, and domestic architecture give voice to a nostalgic melancholy, which, while hazy and dreamlike, reaches a fever pitch at certain visual instances, particularly in the searing splashes of fluorescent pink and heavy, obliterating globs of black paint that appear throughout. 

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Artist Statement

Starting in the 1990's my works were primarily figurative, which had direct narratives derived from my interests in conspiracies, political figures, cult leaders, and explored the context of power and corruption through history.

It was not until I returned to graduate school many years later in 2018 that my work evolved into this current body of work. Through the guidance of Craig Drenen, I made the realization that the figurative images that I once used as the bedrock of my work were actually acting as a guard, preventing me from digging deeper into my psyche. The underpaintings, which I employed as the backdrop to my figurative works, bubbled to the surface and held more significance in a way that allowed those raw marks to exist on their own. It was the stripping away of the recognizable image that allowed me to contend with me; my shit, my past, my present. Discovery through redaction, the idea of stripping the immediate gratification of the human form in such an obvious way and then the dismantling acted as catharsis.

Through reexamination the work became deeply personal in a way that is, at some levels, subconscious, and led me to a allow for the more intuitive way of gestures and brushstrokes. This stream of consciousness painting became an expression of my present mindset-allowing myself to just grapple with my thoughts in the moment. After 20 years of using the human form as a means of communication, this was a compelling evolution in my paintings. The photo works then manifested from a place of contending with the past and the marks made on top were not meant solely as an addition to the image but almost as an erasure of the image as a whole, and in the same context as the paintings, act as a disruption and a dismantling of place and time which are all a part of my personal history.

Taking cues from my last body of work, HOME, which was an investigation of fundamental concepts of human understanding: family, home, loss, love; Not That Broken, is a new series of works that are an evolution of the concepts that at one time were once understood and now are seemingly incomprehensible. Not That Broken includes a journey through my last moments before my mother passed away in 2019, the loss of my childhood home, fragments of my past, and understanding of what home now means in the context of this current world.