PETRA CORTRIGHT

Lucky Duck Lights Out is the name of two types of Dahlias growing in Cortright’s garden. The new paintings mark a shift in Cortright’s practice where she is photographing the flowers grown in her garden, which are the source material, with a Google Pixel Smartphone and a Sony point and shoot instead of mining the Internet for images.

The works in Lucky Duck Lights Out with their brilliant colors, great energy and extensive attention to detail bring to mind the work of Dutch Golden Age painter Rachel Ruysch who like Cortright found much inspiration for her paintings through her garden and gained attention by inventing her own style of making art.

Using the computer as her canvas, Cortright has created a series of luminous, frenzied floral still-lifes in Photoshop, utilizing digital brushes that she has downloaded or developed herself. Yet even when printed on aluminum, Belgian linen, rag paper, or face-mounted, the works continue to maintain evidence of their very digital making:

“All the physical pieces are unique, but there are deep elements of a digital process that I would never want to hide or remove—instead they are celebrated.” – Petra Cortright

Petra Cortright (Santa Barbara, CA, 1986) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She studied Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York, NY (2008) and the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2004). Cortright’s work has been included in: “I Was Raised On the Internet,” MCA Chicago (2018); The Metabolic Age, MALBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina; “On YouTube. Kunst und Playlists aus 10 Jahren,” Kunsthaus Langenthal, Switzerland; “Im Inneren der Stadt,” Künstlerhaus Bremen, Germany; Ural Industrial Biennial, Ekaterinberg, Russia (all 2017); City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand (both solo, 2017); “Electronic Superhighway,” Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2016); Depart Foundation, Los Angeles (solo, 2015); 12th Bienniale de Lyon, France (2013); The 53rd Venice Biennial (2009), New Wave, The Internet Pavilion and upcoming “The Body Electric,” Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019). Her works are in the permanent collections of The Pérez Museum (Miami), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), MOTI (Breda) in collaboration with Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), MCA Chicago, Kadist Foundation (San Francisco), BAMPFA (Berkeley, CA) and the San Jose Museum of Art.