Sadie Laska

Working across painting, sculpture, fabric, and printmaking, Sadie Laska (b. 1974, Prince, WV) creates frenetic, brightly colored compositions chock-full of evocative icons and slogans rendered with sardonic flair.

She invokes the absurdity of contemporary life with coded constructions that reference everything from computer icons to time-worn hieroglyphs for death.

These elementary yet esoteric ideograms–including rain clouds, skulls, cowboys, globes, and arrows–are drawn in a doodled, DIY aesthetic and appear in various media including oils on canvas, shaped mdf cut-outs, sewn banners, and monotypes. Ultimately, collage is the underlying principle of her practice and even her painting process takes its cues from a mixed media ethos–squiggles of spray paint and contrasting chunky gestures frequently sit atop the painted field. Utilizing a variety of cast-offs, detritus, and found objects, she shows a disregard for the supposed sanctity of the painting surface.

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