Night Life 

Editor: Here we have Sarah Joncas's painting, seemingly titled "Night Life." It's an acrylic painting, quite contemporary in its style, featuring a young woman in a cityscape. It's got this dreamy quality to it. What strikes you about this piece? Curator: What interests me immediately is the materiality, the tangible substance, of this painting. Joncas utilizes acrylics, a distinctly modern medium. Acrylic paint, with its quick drying time and vibrant colors, reflects a shift in art production influenced by mass production and synthetic materials. Editor: I see. So the choice of material is significant. But what about the flat color blocks in the background? Curator: Precisely. The artist uses this material in conjunction with "flat color", a very modern use of the paint in contrast to oil’s glazing techniques. She emphasizes the paint as a commodity, one of many modern materials which have allowed her, through purchase, to execute an aesthetic and a feeling, by utilizing readily available material. Editor: That makes sense. So, the imagery and the figure... is it important? Curator: Yes, and no. Everything is in service to the process. We are encouraged to observe how her choices influence the creation, consumption, and distribution within our contemporary, capital-driven society. Think of the labor involved. The purchase of art materials to construct an aesthetic to communicate in our world of mass media… it all is connected! Editor: That's a perspective I hadn't considered. It almost recontextualizes the subject. Curator: Absolutely. What have you learned from our exchange? Editor: I’m learning to look at artwork with its social and historical manufacturing in mind rather than the artwork at face value. Curator: Indeed! And how the artist reflects modern consumerism.