FAWN ROGERS

I like the interplay between the representational qualities of these paintings and scale. They teeter between realism and abstraction depending on your point of view/distance.

Eroticism in the 21st century is fraught with scary implications. We’re so atomized as a species, and so removed from our origins, that bringing the two together almost feels forbidden. I like things that feel forbidden.

Our current geological era is one giant crime scene and we’re all personally involved. It’s overwhelming at times, human nature in conflict with the natural world, it can also be simultaneously a thrill and sorrow. I’m interested in harmony, has it ever existed? These oyster paintings are my mandala in search of a prayer.

The world is your oyster' was often said to young people with life ahead of them. Originating from Shakespeare's play The Merry Wives of Windsor, it exists as a phrase of passionate violence directed toward the pursuit of one's desire. In 1918, as the Spanish flu ravaged the world, oyster beds were pillaged as they were seen to be remedies for the deadly disease. In 2020, when the COVID-19 epidemic hit us, I wanted to work with pleasure and pain, nature and industry, fragility, and the future. The World is Your Oyster pays homage to these idiosyncratic and complex forms, inviting viewers to consider life, sex, and death simultaneously. While oysters are commonly considered luxurious rarities forged by nature, like many things, human intervention has subverted the organic process of their creation. The oysters are harvested, and pearls cultivated. An excision made to the oyster's flesh assaults the viewers' senses; ultimately this work is both violent and sensual, and at the center of these contradictions, the oyster is a symbol of lust, pleasure, opulence, and indulgence, all- consuming and offered up for consumption, a literal embodiment of the anthropocentric.