Ian Hemingway's painting practice examines issues relating to the
problems of human memory. Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada,
Ian now works in both Valatie, New York and Canada. He earned his
B.F.A., a double-major in Painting & Drawing and Art History, from
Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec in 2003, and has exhibited in
both the U.S. and Canada.
Ian's current work explores the relationship between memory and
identity. His work focuses on the space between successful and failed
[re]collection. They assimilate pop images and those of celebrated
sculpture and architecture—thereby popularizing privileged cultural
images and privileging pop ones—to model the symbiotic, mutually
validating (and, occasionally, the ironic) processes of societal and
individual memory. This suggests the degree to which identity is a
function of their negotiation.
Where personal images have been lost, culture fills the void in an
erotic give-and-take of figure/ground, personal/cultural,
process/product—a dangling conversation—that defies the facile and
tyrannizing reifications of the individual and of sanctioned defenders
of historic icons.
