Torn, cut, painted, pinned, and fringed layers of canvas are strategically connected to make the sculptural composite paintings of Ali Silverstein. Canvas, known and utilized as a common substrate for paintings, here becomes the center of the artwork. The artist considers the stacks of painted fabric that she takes apart, collides, and re-positions as her version of childhood building blocks of pattern and color.
Silverstein states, “I am motivated primarily by my desire to understand and explore the world and our human condition [...] and I use my own life to explore it, gathering information as raw material and translating it into patterns, figures and spontaneous marks. All of this reconstructs how it feels to me to process the world: always seeing one thing through another, partly obscured by another, affected by proximity to another — a kaleidoscope of relationships. I struggle to define this process as painting only, as just as often it feels like dance or writing.”