Joe Rudko · Photorealism

PDX CONTEMPORARY ART is pleased to present Photorealism, an exhibition of new, large-scale paintings and intimate drawings by Seattle-based artist Joe Rudko.

A few years ago, Joe Rudko might have wondered when or where a photograph was taken. Now, he asks: is it real? Changes in technology and culture have altered our perception of photography as a reliable record of reality. If photographs are fragmented, altered, and generated, then what does it mean to make a photorealistic painting? The works in this show began from the idea that if anything can be a photograph, anything can be photorealistic.

Rudko’s paintings begin with fragmented pieces of found photography. Collaged snippets of flowers, skies, hands, and snapshots of friends are continued with oil pigment sticks, extending their edges so they cross over one another, creating new, geometric images in the center. These works seek to merge the factual, functional purpose of photography with the more tactile, cerebral qualities of drawing and painting.

Also included in the exhibition is a series of drawings made on pages of a book of Henri Matisse’s travels in Morocco. These colored pencil and pastel drawings were made while the artist was in Paris and became a framework for his own travel drawings.