JOHN DENNISTON II

John Denniston II (b.1999) uses oil paint as a medium to improvise within realistic picture-making structures. By staging scenes of chaotic abstraction from classic formulas, he challenges the ideological implications founded in historic painting practices, opening within them a surreal scene of figurative possibilities. In taking on the discourses of philosophy and anthropology with an artist’s introspection and imagination, he pressures the ability of paint to evoke the conceptual out of the formal, generate new commentaries, and lighten the weight of burdensome logic.

Denniston II’s work has been presented recently in solo exhibitions at Swivel Gallery and The Emerson (2022), and has also featured in group shows at Swivel (2022), Pratt Institute galleries (2022, 2021, 2020) and Gallery House (2019, 2021). He received his BFA in painting from Pratt Institute in 2022, and has taken intensive courses with The Art Digger Lab (2021), MICA (2016), Academy of Art University (2015) and Art Center College of Design (2013-2014).