Author Description

“Like a fleeting dream that escapes the mind upon waking, leaving just a glimmer of feeling or a trace of a past sensation, Phillip Gabriel’s paintings serve as a container for the evanescent. Moody cloudscapes, a masked face, and a limb stabilized by metal pins are familiar yet difficult to pin down, fragments of images plucked from the ether, selected for their specific indistinction rather than symbolic power. These are images that are seemingly agnostic to their sources. Where they come from does not necessarily contribute additional meanings to the overall compositions. In fact, the notion of a source generates further confusion. In keeping to his original reference images, Gabriel faithfully renders the low res glory of the screengrabs he makes from YouTube and other platforms. Here, the original is still a copy—likely a compressed file that has been illicitly uploaded—and the source is merely an aggregator of content created by others elsewhere. By meticulously recreating the resolution of the reference image through paint Gabriel emphasizes the mode in which images are distributed, whether that is by digital means or physical publication. His practice points to a kind of floating world in which images operate, and remind him of how “dreams or memories come in and out of focus, or consciousness... these paintings are like windows or screens, perceived through a haze that comes and go.”– Excerpt from “Stages” by Christopher Lew