Saturday, March 23, 2013

ART, WAR, the 80s, and CMYK


So, I finally got around to publishing a group of images on nfdu PROJECTS that I have been working on forever. Well, it seems like forever. I actually began them when I was still living in Sydney and I've been back in SF for 9 months! Who says procrastination isn’t a quintessential art supply…?

This suite of images continues on from PHOTOREALISM RETHOUGHT, which was more of a technical than a conceptual project, since I was more preoccupied with achieving a specific look than I was with conveying an idea. Though, I’m not so sure that I can conveniently pull those two things apart.

The art gallery and spectator images used in ART, WAR, the 80s, and CMYK were taken a couple of years ago at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. They served as the base or anchor images that all of the other elements were created around. The original black and white photos can be viewed here. The theme, war, was used because it seems to permeate so much in art history and real life for that matter. The 80s, well, what can I say? I've been listening to a lot of 80s music over the past couple of years, so it was bound to surface in my work at some point. CMYK is the palette.

Most of my projects begin with a question, and then, I proceed to make work that attempts to answer that question. For this group, the questions was, “Can a digital image created to look like it was made with paint, graphite, colored markers, etc. satisfy a set of criteria by a viewer, so that it can be classified by that viewer as an actual object known as a drawing or painting?”