JOHN ABRAMS
Artist Statement

"Painting Hitchcock"

The films created by Alfred Hitchcock deal in suspense, aesthetics, psychology, and mistaken identity. To achieve a range of heighten affects the director exploits a set of filmic devices, which structure the viewer’s field of vision, while adapting the cinematic lens’ ability to frame, blend, blur and court the threshold aspects of the extreme close-up, medium close up, pan shot, long shot and so on. Combined with a cast of the world’s most beautiful actors and a cinematic palette, Hitchcock’s films have the power to provoke the double act of looking and seeing.

For the past decade my painting practice has explored images found in art house films for their ability to draw viewers into storylines that take up themes such as: seduction, love, art, and politics through an examination of pictures and narratives captured from the movies.

My interest in exploring the affects of the concept of the modern in film, sculpture and painting are apparent in my new project Painting Hitchcock, that comprises excerpted and painted scenes from Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Trouble with Harry, Rear Window, Torn Curtain and more Hitchcock films.

"Screen Grab"

My art making practice is primarily about painting and looking. After years of practice, I can employ a wealth of practical knowledge along with good grasp of cultural theory as it pertains to painting’s relationship with film, and to spectacle in my work. I have always been interested in the impact of visual media on the present, and continue to look at popular culture for source imagery. In the 80’s most of images I worked with came from magazines such as Vogue or National Geographic, in the 90’s newspaper photos became my source. More recently, my painting proceeds from looking at international film, and by extension digital video. There is evidence in my new paintings that I have been taking advantage of new basement studio. The subterranean space allows me to experiment with new surging painterly techniques that show a kind of immediacy between the acts of painting in its confrontations with the cinema image.