Second Skin  by  Anja Salonen

@leiminspace is proud to announce Second Skin - Anja Salonen’s second solo show. The opening reception will begin at 7 pm on April 2nd, 2016 and will be on view throughout the month of April.

    

     Second Skin presents a new series of works that interrogates the role of the body in contemporary image culture. The series consists of brightly-colored oil paintings whose surfaces vary in size and shape, softness and rigidity.  The paintings both explore and disorient relationships between consumption, objects, food, fetishization, and the sexualization of the body.  The space is littered with sagging canvases that challenge the fixity of the work as a material – the faces are sexualized and distorted, while cartoon-like cutouts interact with the paintings on the wall. Also included is a collaborative video project with Bo Hesslegrave, in which Salonen performs as the figures from her paintings, interpolating the "real" with her invented figures. 

 

Anja Salonen (b. 1994) lives and works in Los Angeles. She attended Rhode Island School of Design and CalArts. Her work has been shown at Friend Gallery, Sunday Los Angeles, Studio 106, Motel Gallery, Think Tank Gallery, As it Stands, Carlos Queso Gallery, and will be shown at the Mänttä Art Festival in Finland in June.