Strangers

Motives

16"x22"x1.5"

Oil on canvas

February 2014

So much of our identities are sculpted by others' opinions. We are what we are permitted to be. We are taught what is socially acceptable in the society in which we live. Our personalities are filtered by a screen and we act how we are taught to act in public. These screens filter out what makes us different and it is so easy to lose sight of the quirks that set us apart. Commercial society constantly has us thinking about ourselves, selling products that claim to cater to our individuality. What exactly is this paradox doing to the cores of our personality? Do we actually even have personalities at all? Is it possible that we are we all merely reflections of people in our lives collaged together?

Real Glitch Painting Experiments

I'm drawn intensely to vibrant neon colors at this point and time. The instinct to combine unusual colors is very strong, [especially if there is a chance they will look horrible next to each other]. Once that is done, I proceed to find a color that will make the color combination okay again. The repetition is enjoyable, and it is satisfying to reveal a stenciled perfect line. I plan to screen print on canvas sometime soon, and then paint on that. I've been trying to think of ideas to paint, but it seems as though it's better to imagine the second step after completing the first rather than to idealize a masterpiece. That could be one reason why my recent work leans towards abstraction.

Glitch Painting Experiments

Contrasting Spectacles: Show Installation

I'm going to be installing my work at Next Door on the 9th; my work will be along one [giant!] wall and I'll be showing with Jillian Schiavi. The closing reception will be sometime in January or February. I plan to show my work in a new way with the montages I have made. The montages will be presented alongside the painting in order for the viewer to seek out ways in which the paintings deviated from the sources. The montages provide a starting point for a dialogue, and it'll be interesting to see how the conversation changes with them presented as prints in floating frames on the wall. 

Next Door on Artslant

Work-Related Research

Carnivalesque by Bakhtin
This is a bit of a starting point for research for my [historical] investigation of indulgence. This explains a bit about the concepts of the carnival found in the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin. This writing was referenced in Television Cultures by John Fiske.


       

Simulation Installation

Waiting Room Simulation "A painting itself can contribute to [this] decorating." -Excerpt from artist statement

File>Duplicate

I feel a pull in my practice. The digital influences are changing the arts vernacular, and changing it while I try to carve out what is my practice and what is not. Going back to the Orchestra of Overkill series, which in all honesty, right now consists of one painting. Which is okay. The means of which this project requires are extenuating, but the obligation to myself to finish, or at least gain a substantial amount of headway on it, is the fuel.
Meanwhile, I make photomontages as a tool to contemplate the content of the final works. I am inclined to refer to these photomontages as sketches. What is interesting, though, is that they cannot quite exist as an original, and when grouped with my painting process, I feel this is gravely problematic. These montages have the capability to exist on millions of screens if posted online, or millions of editions as a print, and yet not one of those images is the original.

"An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the "authentic" print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed." -Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction