Artist and musician Andrew Chalfen is fascinated by patterns, and how they ripple, radiate, refract, bloom, interact, cluster, construct, and deconstruct. His works allude to aerial views, cartography, architectural renderings, musical notation, urban densities, and other natural and man-made patterns, while not literally being any of those things. Rather, his pieces reflect his psychological states during their creation, a kind of topography of thought and mood as he works through various aesthetic themes that have long held his attention. Shapes often spill out over edges, suggesting unseen continuations beyond, while others seek containment. His recent mixed media work with painted dowels focuses on connections, intersections, and layers, a non-representational way of depicting how we relate to the world and one another.
Chalfen’s process mirrors that of his songwriting and music arranging. He utilizes the repetition of a small selection of formal elements, subtle variation, the timbre of the color palate, rhythm, and a combination of randomization strategies and intentionality. Every work is a process journey, in which he refines elements that grab him from previous pieces, and then pushes into unknown territory with experimentation and risk, always iterating. He follows his instincts, deviates from them when necessary, and trusts the process to guide the work to a successful outcome and maybe even a breakthrough or two.
Viewers may not know what to focus on first, becoming overwhelmed and subsequently absorbed in the details. The experience is reminiscent of mediation. Certainly working on these pieces in the studio is a meditative, flow-state way of being, where Chalfen can take his time to think about and explore through art-making themes of nostalgia, anxiety, play, musicality, fragility, impenetrable data, accelerating planetary chaos, and physical and psychic fragmentation.
