Keelin Montzingo

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Longing for a time that never was and a place that is accessible only within the imagination, Keelin Montzingo presents a collection of exciting new work that navigates the space between notions of home and the projected world we occupy online. Here, home refers not to where we live, but how we exist within our bodies and how this has changed over time as technology has developed and our sense of self has become increasingly warped and abstracted.

Cosmic Latte is known to be the average color of the universe, the compression of all we know to exist, a milky beige which is found in all of Montzingo’s new paintings. Referencing the mirroring of the cosmos within the Internet, these works explore the dichotomy between self-expression and entrapment within simulation. The search for authenticity in the contemporary world is inextricably linked to public displays of fictionalized behavior. As we seek to find ourselves we develop increasingly more sophisticated ways to invent who we are for others.

The mirror and the real meet and connect at a threshold where we can either try to untangle the facade or find ways of working with where we have arrived, understanding that we cannot revert back to the myths we have cultivated. This journey of controlling representation is nothing new, the Internet is simply a contemporary vehicle for a process we have been undergoing for centuries. The difference is that now we are accelerating at a pace we cannot keep up with or control.

Montzingo does not seek to judge those who cultivate personas, she does not perceive this behavior as duplicitous but rather as an act of creativity. Our ability to imagine is what has led us to turn the camera on ourselves and use the body as a platform for storytelling. Ironically the most extraordinary aspect of humanity, our ability to envision, is also what leads us to invent ever more creative ways to attack the psyche and enact destructive behaviors. Whenever something verges towards a deeper truth, a deeper facade comes with it. Reflected in the cosmos we cannot escape the laws of attraction and opposition.

Montzingo longs to escape the complexity of the now, to dwell in the pastel landscapes of a 1970s Palm Springs utopia where all is simplified and we are distilled to archetypes, the female body a symbol of the mother, the creator, the lover, the seer. But this is impossible, so instead she affords her subjects the freedom of time travellers, moving back and forth through data, creating a link between an imagined past, the contemporary world and projections of the future. For this reason, instead of painting women she knows, Montzingo paints models who are anonymous to her, employing the silhouette of the conventionally celebrated body to free this stereotype and speak of all female identity.