It's insightful that when most of us think that Emma Stern's paintings look like the future, she is thinking in a different era. "I’ve always thought Rothko’s were kind of futuristic and I’m not even a Rothko fan," Stern said in an interview with Half Gallery. "Those things are so fucking bleak. People say they are joyous and meditative, but I find them completely impenetrable, they give nothing. His work is an imposition, like a monolith. It’s a painting of nothing that you can’t ignore."
Emma Stern's paintings are unlike most things you see in a gallery. They look 3D, futuristic, digital, not human. As if they were painted by AI. But she is a classic oil painter, where she can manipulate a material with such a delicious future-forward texture. She is using the technology availalbe in the moment of game developers and applying it to the most antiquated of materials.
"The way I see it at this point is, I’m creating these virtual worlds and these paintings are the artifacts," Stern says. "It can feel archeological at times, like I’m building this universe but also exploring it as I go." Universally speaking, Stern is also having fun with Booty!, her new solo show where there is a combination of divinity and humor, a continued mastery of light and shadows and absurdity and technology. And in every show, it gets more and more original. —Evan Pricco
