An avowed painter/draughtsman, Patrick Phipps presents a series of sculptures where the challenge was to avoid direct figurative representation, in opposition to his normal mode of working. These intuitive sculptures are about form, color and texture. For some of the sculptures, representation, or the semblance of representation may be unavoidable. The forms reference the Freudian sense of the uncanny. The challenge in making these works lay in trying to refrain from references to specific objects. Phipps acknowledges his antecedents in the work of Austrian artist Franz West, as well as the work of Rachel Harrison, an artist who recently showed in the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston’s Perspectives Gallery.

Patrick Phipps lives and works in Houston and has shown in the previous incarnation of the Domy Books site, Mixture Contemporary Art. He is an alumnus of the University of Houston’s MFA Painting program and a former Core Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. His day job at a museum bookstore brings him into contact with a steady stream of images. His past work has dealt with themes of abjection, hierarchies in art, and humor and has embraced more vernacular modes of production such as zines and comics.