Jeff Elrod: ESP

The work of American abstract painter Jeff Elrod (b. 1966) is based on the combination and interweaving of digital and analogue practices. Working in large-scale formats, he uses basic editing programs like Photoshop or Illustrator and adopts their typical forms of digital imagery. Elrod then transposes these computer designs on canvas by using ‘classical’ techniques such as painting, drawing or spraying, sometimes even printing them directly onto the canvas. His works thereby capture a moment when analogue and digital production clash, connecting the profound history of painting, abstraction and digital movement. In a recent series of works, Elrod alienates initially computer-generated drawings into blurry, vague images that eliminate any coherence.

‘Elrod’s technique has modified in the past decade as the tricks of Photoshop have evolved – color gradients, spray effects, and even the option of scanning a potential background scrap that he has found in his studio all now crop up in his large-scale works, compounding the complexity of transferring the image onto the canvas in his Sunset Park studio. Nevertheless, Elrod’s mediation still happens with his use of the mouse between him and the machine.’

C. Bollen, in ‘The New Abstract: Jeff Elrod’, in Interview Magazine, 2014