Andy Collins was born on 1971 in Atlanta, Georgia. He did BFA, Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta, Georgia in 1994 and MFA, School of Visual Arts, New York in 1999. Andy Collins's paintings are lusciously synthetic. Cold and glossy, his large pastel canvases are suffocating vacuums of glamour. Working from fashion photos, Collins's abstracted forms are derived from the overlooked in-between spaces of supermodel spreads. Folds in fabric, creases in elbows, knees and armpits become a pattern of fetishised contemplation. Their contours are retraced and suggested forms are embellished, creating ethereal motifs that are both organic and electrifying. Collins's process is one of almost perverse fixation. Taking several months to complete a painting, he painstakingly constructs his airless forms entirely by hand, leaving no trace of brushwork. In Untitled, his biomorphic composition, a sublime vacuous beauty, mesmerises both seduction and emptiness.

Andy Collins's paintings glow with a transcendental eroticism, bringing about a heightened state of awareness where physical sensuality courts cerebral enlightenment. Inspired by the prurience of fashion adverts, Untitled's composition construes desire's lingering remains as a Rorschach-like distortion; a mandala of allurement and absence. Collins conceives overwhelming sensation as an intangible void; his paintings resonate with a voyeuristic proclivity. Equally intimate and distant, his obsessive process (of up to 30 layers of seamless application) infuses his smooth surface with a slick confidence.

Andy Collins's paintings are models of visual perfection. Approaching painting with a minimalist's fetishism, Collins hones his canvases to the simplest and boldest statements to capitalise on the power of suggested form. Working from photos, Andy Collins removes the subject, focussing instead on the evocative possibility of implied image. His abstracted patterns retain the essence of their original picture, and extrapolate a more complex interpretation, provoking emotional and spiritual reactions to qualities of surface, colour and composition. In Untitled, Andy Collins presents a pattern of mesmerising consonance. His biomorphic form insinuates bodily tactility; through clinical rendering, Andy Collins elevates these connotations to a metaphysical plane, creating a sensuality that's idealistic and conceptually pure.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2005

? Mary Boone Gallery, New York

? Corvi-Mora, London

? Artemis Greenberg Van Doren, New York

2004

? Marc Foxx, Los Angeles

2003

? Marc Foxx, Los Angeles

? Corvi-Mora, London

2002

? Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris

2001

? Marc Foxx, Los Angeles

? Galleria Emilio Mazzoli, Modena, Italy

2000

? Audiello Fine Art, Inc., New York

1999

? Audiello Fine Art, Inc., New York

Conclusions:

Andy Collins's paintings are models of visual perfection. Approaching painting with a minimalist's fetishism, Collins hones his canvases to the simplest and boldest statements to capitalise on the power of suggested form. Working from photos, Andy Collins removes the subject, focussing instead on the evocative possibility of implied image. His abstracted patterns retain the essence of their original picture, and extrapolate a more complex interpretation, provoking emotional and spiritual reactions to qualities of surface, colour and composition.

What to Do Next...

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