Candace Caston’s Night Vision weaves together memories in twilight revery through mixed media collages. The dense and complexly layered works buzz with energy. Palm trees, car interiors, houses, interstates, and cityscapes are framed through windows. The artist builds a world where time, space, and memory conflate and stretch until broken.
Caston’s small works on paper utilize magazine clippings and gouache to reconstruct scenes the artist pulls from memory and observation, imparting a moody and atmospheric impression. A dusky haze hangs over the places depicted; day and night exist simultaneously, offering a fissured reality. The soft brilliance of wet petals are pasted atop distinct patterns of wood grain, acting as hooks for a cloying familiarity. Images of stars twinkling sit beside bright city lights and swashes of paint abstractly render the interiors of cars and buildings. Caught in gloomy hours of nightfall, poised between clarity and abstraction, the works oscillate in and out of focus.
Visual whiplash occurs as abstracted elements clash with the terse accuracy of collaged clippings. In the foreground of Small Hours (2024), a single blue outline of a cup rests on a table, beyond it in a window viewers can see cars in traffic. One portion of the roadway exists in an eternal night filled with red brake lights and next to it is a curving road that is sunlit and devoid of any vehicle, idyllic. Using hurtling perspectives within cars, works like Tunnel Vision (2023) and Inner State (2023) are transcendent in comparison. Moving at different speeds, they not only depict being a passenger but also evoke the rush from within, capturing a moment before everything becomes a blur.
Majority of the works depict portals of some kind. Through windows with blinds, sunroofs, windshields, gated doorways, and rearview mirrors the world passes by. A visual murmur resonates within the work, pulsating with stars, flashing lights, zooming cars, and looming palm trees. The works reflect the world through Caston’s memories, creating an impossible familiarity. Something rooted in her mind, inaccessible to outsiders and no longer tangible, remains a haunting.
Between the push and pull of interiority and exteriority as well as that of abstraction and realism, energy is generated. Deftly pulling elements of collaged material into tight mind-boggling scenes is a joy to excavate. Night Vision packs a punch of visual richness, delving into the murky territory of memory, where certain details and feelings glint through a haze of recollected experiences, not wholly known but far from forgotten.
Night Vision by Candace Caston is on view at Tennessee Gallery, Atlanta through October 20, 2024.
