Sun, Nov 8, 2015, 4:06PM Painting

In his spare, abstract paintings, works on paper, and installations, Robert Atwell walks the line between the digital and the handmade, exploring how this intersection shapes his own approach to art-making. Intentionally ambiguous, with titles that record the date and time of their making without hinting at their subject matter, Atwell’s works are the end products of a labor-intensive process of visual distillation. A keen observer of his surroundings, he begins by sketching what inspires him, including the flat Midwestern landscape, consumer culture and advertisements, vintage cartoons, and digital graphics. He then moves to the computer, using it to manipulate and pare down his sketches, transforming them into cartoonish, geometric shapes that he translates into slick, hard-edged paintings on aluminum, intimate collages on paper, and immersive installations—the essence of an image-saturated world.