A Third Way of Seeing
This body of work disrupts binary thinking by using fungal inspired iconography to demonstrate how opposing qualities can exist together in multifaceted balanced compositions. While the study of fungi inspires their work, the abstraction of these forms creates the space for audience members, with or without an understanding of mycology, to bring their own narratives and interpretations. Surface and texture become content through areas of sanding, priming, and building up layers of paint. Control versus out of control, intention versus accident, flat versus three dimensional, and foreground verses background are all called into question as each painting weaves between and connects these opposites. The process of building up and degrading the surface of these canvases emulates the ways some fungi facilitate growth, while other fungal species are charged with decay. Through their paintings, Karson is giving his audiences the space to interrogate how in every seemingly binary pairing, there is a way for the two opposing facts or ideas to be true in the same space at the same time. There is inevitably a third way of seeing, if you choose to look for it.
(See undergraduate thesis for more information)