BODY / SPACE
IMAGE
OIL PAINTING
VELLUM ABSTRACTION
OIL PAINTINGMOTION /
FIELD MOTION
WALL DRAWING /
WD PROPOSALS
VELLUM
TEXT PIECES
ARTIST
STATEMENT
BIO
CV
CONTACT
Artist Statement:
Note on Body Representations & Abstract Space
Body Representation
The body representations in my work are made from observation of screen space images, in person sight observation, and printed image references. These representations are in oil, and reductive processes in wood and stone by direct manipulation of the materials. Choice of subject is a large part of the conceptual aspects in these works. I am painting historical and contemporary figures in an attempt to effect the story of history by representing who I think is and should be seen as significant. Although the body representations are naturalistic in these artworks, the surrounding space is abstract geometrical invention. I use the space of my abstract works informed by polytope math models as a new architectural space for the body. For example, in my painting of Ulysses S. Grant, I sculpted a stellated form surrounding the figure using a 20 star geometrical shape from my interest in an orthogonal 10 dimensional cube in mathematical model projections. This abstraction ornamenting the body representation is new. It is not an idea copied from architectural history. The dark blue oil painted surface of this frame abstraction is the color of the Union soldier uniform. I intended it as symbolic of Grant's success in keeping the nation one by subduing the southern revolt from the United States of America. Selection of contemporary figures is to represent the people of my time. I create abstract space as a new space and a new architecture for these body representations.
Abstract Space
My geometric abstract compositions are conscious layered algorithmic structures composed to communicate full, resonent responses to new rational order in the perceiving viewer. All aspects are invented expressions from specific base polytope forms in orthogonal projection, abstracted further to a fundimental form, these shapes can be simplified to specific divisions of a circle. Although all aspects of the space are rational, the form expression is more than a math model. I make these abstract spaces off the computer by hand. My intent is to show that geometrical invention is the work of the human mind, there does not need to be computer software involved in all material based artforms in contemporary art.
A satisfying sense of the whole expressed through all aspects of the structure that appears to continue outwards, and is simultaneously a complete composition. Once geometrical abstraction is perspectival, it engages in architectural space because it is the space of ocular perception.
These abstractions are a modernist type of contemporary art. Meaning, I intend to create new geometrical space in cultural objects, not post-modern by the architectural definition; reincorporating old geometrical forms from previous cultures in new buildings and objects.
Although number is a central invention in human logic, it is an invented idea. For example, an atom exists as an idea and in reality, but a number is an invented conceptual abstraction to order and understand. Since matter exist without the conceptual abstraction of number there are other ways of creating rational order then by the human invention of number. Specific rational shape relations in space are possibly closer to natural structure than number and contain the number abstractions in the very space / shape. I am not rejecting number but am asking the viewer to consider logic embodied in material space relations.
The intension is a new structural space expression in cultural objects. I am consciously braking from 20th century abstraction in painting by bring abstract polytope projected space into perspective space in these paintings. The resulting illusions of orthogonal, multi-dimensional volumes, the perspectival space, and the flat-modernist material surface space exist all at once in the painting reflecting the complexity of contemporary reality. 20th century's design space had a tendency from Bauhaus to simplify invented space to the bare minimal Vitruviun, "primary structures" and Le Corbusier’s, widely copied in architecture and into painting, avoidance of complex symmetries in favor of asymmetric space that symbolized musical improvisation as freedom in solid form, but had a tendency to avoid the stronger symmetries, weakening the possibility of the most open new formal structure capasities, the widest diversity and greater geometric force in cultural form by creating a possible new whole from complex polytope grid spaces. My work engages in modern geometrical complex rational invented space without an avoidance of new symmetries.
Devin Power, 2026.