Operating at the intersection of psychology and horror, This Must Be the Place is an investigation of memory, a questioning of personhood, and an unveiling of how unsettling the mind has the potential to be.
Why do certain moments stain?
In this body of work, Foster explores the anomalies within her own behavioral tendencies. Through the interrogation of experiences recalled from adolescence, she dissects moments that have fueled her fears, anxieties and have impacted her sense of self today. Considering not only how certain memories are stored but also why certain memories stick, while others fade away. Foster emphasizes a moment’s ability to ‘stain’ the mind, permeating the works and the exhibition in an alizarin crimson hue.
Was this engrained generationally? Was this something learned? Was this something taught? Can this be pinpointed to a specific moment? Was this memory real or imagined?
Through representational painting, Foster creates work that suggests a level of cognitive dissonance. Utilizing techniques such as blurring, repetition, and symbology, the work reflects memory processing and how we archive moments of impact. Furthering a sense of disorientation and to exemplify the struggle in this excavation of self, scenes break apart and split across multiple frames. Figures and patterns fade into dark, unknown voids. Materials flood off canvases and bleed onto surrounding walls while colors blur, shift, and disintegrate. This Must Be the Place is a constant push and pull between internal vs external, a negotiation of two-dimensional vs three-dimensional space, and a questioning of imagination vs reality - blurring the line that distinguishes each.
This Must Be the Place is a direct reference to the song, This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) by Talking Heads. It is a song that not only carries a heavy sense of nostalgia but also anticipation, longing, and dread. On the surface it appears an honest love song, but upon further analysis it generates a greater meaning - nestling itself between the threads of familiarity and uncertainty, aspects of which are mirrored in Foster's body of work.
Danielle Foster (b. 1995, California) is a visual artist living and working in Los Angeles, California. She received a BA from California State University Channel Islands (Camarillo) in 2019 and will complete her MFA at Otis College of Art and Design in the spring of 2022.
