Hybrid Memories
Tracking the self and retracing the usable-past, to develop new visual narratives, reveals an important thread of discourse. To wit, consider portraiture; consider the still life. Potent social commentary in the 1600s and late 1800s. People stylishly depicted in their personal spaces; the luxurious nature of their everyday things around them.
Heading into the 20th Century this work artfully recorded a fragmenting society through fractured faces, disintegrating objects and dis-assembled spaces. But still beautifully rendered with dramatic colors and patterns.
At the same time, a culture of aesthetic-redaction commenced questioning the nature of art. An inquiry mutating over time into an art of non-realities. Detached from any aesthetic concerns, this art of concept also de-stabilized the relationship between truth and fiction.
To wit, consider conceptual art as censorship - the inherent censoring of aesthetics. Fast forward to now. Self-contained identities grow boundless. The indulgence of self a global activity. Spaces people occupy, and their personae, morph at will from one style-construct to another.
The familiar objects that populate our lives cease to be concrete. While luxury articulates the new consumer standard. All this results in a dis-connect from the aesthetic pleasures that fulfill us. And, meanwhile, the tyranny of concept still overrides creative output at the expense of artistic appreciation.
In addressing this aesthetic disregard, my work reconnects with those historical cultural-weavings through that relationship of portraiture to still life. In new combinings of human and possession, extracts from my usable past (and present) are merged with virtual interior-spaces.
The images, supported by some of my luxurious everyday-things, rematerialize aspects of my lived experience - demonstrating that memories are both actual and artificial. As well as producing new socio-cultural recordings that encourage pleasure-in-viewing.
