2024 MFA Thesis Exhibition

I make paintings based on digital collages of found images that investigate concepts of technological posthumanism. Through painting I grapple with the interplay between fear and desire, loneliness and connection, past and future, and physicality and virtuality.

My paintings always begin in my archive, where I collect images scavenged from throughout the constructed reality of virtual space. Honoring the materiality of my references, I use paint to embody the virtual, rendering viscera with goopy oil paint, smooth computer-sculpted forms with airbrush, and graphic elements with matte Flashe paint. These techniques come together on the canvas, which is transformed into the desolate landscape of computer programs, to produce swirling, knotted, and ex/imploding homunculi that both consume and repel the viewer.

The surrealist figures that emerge from the collisions of disparate imagery teeter at the intersection of sci-fi, pornography and snuff. A curvaceous body here, a mysteriously metallic tube there; the armored exoskeletons of giant robots lay decimated amongst the entrails that splatter blank virtual landscapes. Within the frame of the canvas is a bloody battlefield strewn with corpses, an unsettlingly seductive virtual orgy, or a tranquil beach whose shoreline is dotted with the driftwood debris of posthuman desire.

Consolidating the past, present, and futures of human-technology coexistence is an impossible task, so I focus on the ephemeral snippets of human souls I find embedded in my archive; the dreams, fears, and desires that dictate how we envision the future of our world. Rather than merely focusing on technology as a concept, my works are instead meditations on darkened computer screens and polished metal machines––the places where we see our own faces reflected back at us. Using collage as a form of alchemical synthesis, my works highlight narratives of desire and loneliness, dysmorphia and technolust, scavenging for brief moments of transcendence amongst infinite virtual detritus.

Jordan Homstad is a painter working at the intersection of collage, virtual space, sexuality, and human connection. Currently based in New York City, their work has been shown at A Space Gallery, Brooklyn; A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn; The Hole, New York City; Collaborations (with scroll.nyc), Copenhagen; the 25E Gallery, New York City; the Midwest Art Fair (with Nightclub), Chicago; the Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Minneapolis; Second Floor Gallery, Minneapolis; Nightclub, Minneapolis; and Waiting Room, Minneapolis, among others. They received their BFA in Studio Art from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities with a second major in Art History. Homstad published the essay “Writing the Unfamiliar Landscape” in the book C. C. Wang: Lines of Abstraction (eds. Wen-shing Chou and Daniel M. Greenberg, 2023), as well as their first artist book, “A Glossary of Hyperhumanity” (2023). They will be graduating with an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design in May 2024.