Jonathan Tignor
About
Jonathan Tignor (b. 1997) is a London-based artist originally from Dallas, Texas. He graduated from Colorado College with a BA in Creative Writing in 2019 and received a Post-Baccalaureate in Studio Art at the Burren College of Art in 2023.
Jonathan Tignor’s paintings are narratively structured around concerns with imagery and tension. However, through an adroit approach, Tignor takes aim at themes of violence and precarity in a critique of his American identity. He views Americanness as built upon a bedrock of fantasy, fiction, and mythology, and he seeks to scrutinize the tensions inherent in these discursive constructions. To Tignor, the American context frequently operates in dangerous proximity to evil, and it is contingent upon the fantasies that support it: the discoverer, the explorer, the cowboy, the warrior, the saviour.
The narratives that unfold within the paintings are never clear. They simmer in ambiguity and allow space for the creative act within the processes of looking and interpretation. Tignor’s paintings then ask viewers to linger with what’s before them and question the role of their viewership. Consequently, tension, and its role as a narrative building block, is not confined to the relationships between figures or settings within the painting. The tensions expand outward: between the real and imagined, the represented and the representation, the viewer and the viewed.
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