Justin Menendez

Artist Statement

Immediate Abstraction

We are interested in how images are made and how they are seen, and the tension between those two states is what we want from the work.

We do not plan the image. We cannot; the mind is unable. We find it through movement—paint, then the camera, then the file, then more paint. There is pleasure in the creativity of improvisation. It is the same pleasure as playing guitar: we want to invent the line in the moment.

We are seeking an image we already know but have never seen. We often choose the one that stops us first. Always the one that asks us to return.