The Gown 2017

Editor: So, here we have Joshua Flint's 2017 oil painting, "The Gown." I’m immediately struck by this strange tension; you have the very domestic image of a gown hanging in a window, but the room seems overtaken by nature. How do you interpret this unusual combination? Curator: From a materialist perspective, it speaks volumes about labor and value. We see oil paint applied "en plein air," traditionally a mode for landscape painters. Yet here, it captures not just a landscape, but a fabricated, domestic space penetrated by the natural world. Notice the gown, the *product* – likely the result of considerable skilled labor. It's presented, not worn, its purpose deferred. Editor: So, you’re saying that by placing this very refined object – the gown – in contrast with this encroaching wilderness, Flint comments on labor invested? Curator: Precisely! The painting prompts us to question where and how things are made. What conditions shaped the production of the gown versus, say, the wild landscape depicted at the foreground? This "plein air" technique underscores the raw labor embedded within the very process of capturing an image. And look at the composition; what strikes you about it? Editor: The waterfall coming *into* the space... that sort of destroys the assumed barrier between outside and inside, creating a merged place. Curator: It absolutely does, doesn’t it? Nature has literally flooded into this interior. Consider the value we ascribe to objects versus the "worth" we grant natural materials and the work they perform, sustaining ecosystems. Flint presents a collision: the manufactured, symbolized by the gown, versus the raw. Do we know what we truly value? Editor: It makes me think about the sustainability of materials too. Thanks, I never would have approached it that way. Curator: Considering material production helps reveal our culture's systems of valuation and the human labor behind them. Hopefully this piece nudges us to consider art making from that angle, as well.