Pat Phillips: Strange Suburb
612 North Almont Dr
Los Angeles, California 90069
“I often use painting as a way to reflect. A way to unpack memories, past traumas, and experiences that seemed pretty normal by 90’s/early 2000’s standards. Mythologies we repeated...games we played...phrases we spoke...even our relationships. As I get older, I think about these events. Frequently embellished or glossed over...how that party was so dope!, but someone dropped the N-bomb. Sometimes as a means of survival this meant laughing it off to show everyone you weren’t “a pussy.” Sometimes that meant punching someone in the face.
Strange Suburb is a visual diary of these lived experiences. From assimilation to retaliation, this series depicts a body as it navigates through a hospitable, yet hostile environment of the American South. Permeated with cultural iconography, cartoon characters, and personal imagery...these paintings create a hypertension of cultural clashes as the social norms and its landscapes change.”
Pat Phillips (b. 1987 Lakenheath, England) was raised in Louisiana. In 2019, he presented work at the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Solo exhibitions include Consumer Reports, Jeffrey Deitch, New York; Told You Not to Bring That Ball, Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, LA; and Summer Madness; M+B, Los Angeles, CA. Recent group shows include “Who Says, Who Shows, What Counts,” Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL; We Fight to Build a Free World, Jewish Museum, New York; NEW at NOMA: Recent Acquisitions in Contemporary Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; and THIS IS AMERICA, Kunstraum Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany. In 2017, he received a Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant. Phillips has also participated in residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. His work can be found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Block Museum of Art, Evanston, IL; and New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA, among others. Pat Phillips lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.