6 Artworks to Invest in This October
Conor Backman
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The work of Conor Backman—conceptually laced photorealistic paintings, assemblages, and sculptures—carefully reproduces and re-contextualizes the detritus and ephemera of popular culture. Wrapping paper, construction materials, drum heads, pop cans, artists’ palettes, and more all constitute the subjects of Backman's eye and work, and he often intricately and carefully renders them in oil on canvas.
The oil paint, ink, and steel sculpture Positive Feedback Loop is an excellent example of the themes permeating Backman's work: it depicts an art history textbook that has been torturously bent and opened to a page bearing a reproduction of Spanish painter Diego Velázquez’s 1656 masterpiece, Las Meninas. Though one assumes it is a photographic image, this page is actually a carefully rendered miniature that Backman painted himself. Backman also mirrors the text of the caption and, as the title suggests, creates a reproduction of a reproduction of an artwork; it was reproduced once more photographically for distribution on Backman’s website and in other publications. This playing with the originality of a work of art and questioning of how it represents social interaction (a theme explored by Velázquez himself in Las Meninas) is at the heart of Backman’s work and its searing conceptualism.
Backman …
The work of Conor Backman—conceptually laced photorealistic paintings, assemblages, and sculptures—carefully reproduces and re-contextualizes the detritus and ephemera of popular culture. Wrapping paper, construction materials, drum heads, pop cans, artists’ palettes, and more all constitute the subjects of Backman's eye and work, and he often intricately and carefully renders them in oil on canvas.
The oil paint, ink, and steel sculpture Positive Feedback Loop is an excellent example of the themes permeating Backman's work: it depicts an art history textbook that has been torturously bent and opened to a page bearing a reproduction of Spanish painter Diego Velázquez’s 1656 masterpiece, Las Meninas. Though one assumes it is a photographic image, this page is actually a carefully rendered miniature that Backman painted himself. Backman also mirrors the text of the caption and, as the title suggests, creates a reproduction of a reproduction of an artwork; it was reproduced once more photographically for distribution on Backman’s website and in other publications. This playing with the originality of a work of art and questioning of how it represents social interaction (a theme explored by Velázquez himself in Las Meninas) is at the heart of Backman’s work and its searing conceptualism.
Backman has shown his work globally since 2007, including shows in Hong Kong in 2012 and in Leipzig, Germany in 2011.
Born 1988
Lives and Works New York, NY
Education
BFA Sculpture Extended Media and Painting and Printmaking, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, 2011
Works Available for Purchase
No works
