On Not Knowing by Phillip Buntin

Untitled, 2013
Acrylic on canvas
36" x 36"
©2013RobertHenryContemporary

Phillip Buntin’s paintings in acrylic on canvas and enamel on Plexiglas are visual explorations of complexity, ambiguity and understanding. He explores the experiential aspects of incompleteness by creating abstract structures that are explorations between categories of thought in philosophy, science and art. This exhibition will feature 10 new works.

In pursuit of something elusive and unstable, layers of graphs, charts and notations taken from varied scientific sources offer copious amounts of conflicting, complex information without necessarily understanding. Always in motion or states of change, his compositions allude to our strivings and limitations when seeking to understand the phenomenal world. Buntin is interested in how we come to terms with complexity and how complex phenomena always on some level elude our grasp. Just as reality itself is ephemeral, so too are the understandings we construct in the attempt to come to terms with such complexity.  Buntin says, “It is my hope that…my viewers realize through absence that our interpretations and understandings of complex phenomena are illuminating yet incomplete, and as such, are always open to reevaluation.” 

Phillip Buntin received a BS in Psychology from Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA in 1989, a BFA in 1997 from The Atlanta College of Art and an MFA from the University of Connecticut, Storrs CT in 2002. His work has been exhibited nationally since 1998. He teaches art at the Trumbull Campus of Kent State University in Warren, OH, where he lives and maintains his studio.