On any given afternoon you might find omni-format artist Ali Silverstein cutting, dragging, repositioning, crawling over, pinning up, or layering piles of painted canvas across her studio floor. Whether in Los Angeles or in Santa Fe, New Mexico, her studios are sites of collision and connection.
This taking apart and re-positioning—this veiling and unveiling, obscuring and revealing—is the primary modus operandi applied to psychological, architectural, cultural, and/or deeply personal themes no matter the medium.
If we followed her practice backwards, we would find young Ali on her interior designer Grandmother’s bed, playing with fabric swatches. Stacks of pattern, texture, and color that would later be transformed into environments—three dimensional spaces carefully designed and installed for living, exploring, and expansion.
“I can’t help but see, looking at my studio floor, those stacks of fabric—my own version of childhood building blocks of patterns and color that I ferried from here to there into countless pleasing configurations on the comforter of my Grandma’s bed,” says Ali.
Born in Los Angeles in 1980, Ali earned her BA in Comparative Religion and Visual Art from Columbia University and then moved to London to pursue her study of painting at the Slade School of Art. Before completing her MFA, Ali was asked to be one of the inaugural advisors for the Outset Contemporary Art Fund, the leading international non-profit supporting innovative art projects. Upon graduation, she was represented by Bischoff Weiss Gallery as she continued to explore—and paint, and film, and write, and build—the way that things affect each other in relationships.
Ali has written about her relationship with Chuck Close for the New York Times, reconstructed an entire Icelandic ship wreck with installed wax-on-canvas rubbings for MoCA Tucson, and directed and produced music videos, short films, and an award-winning feature-length documentary. She has exhibited in solo and group shows internationally, concepted ambitious brand partnerships, and can be found in public and private collections around the world. She is self-represented.