Open gallery
In my work I use color, flatness, and invented abstraction to describe how the invention of the internet has reconstructed our globalized world through rapid communication. Through the use of painting, my work also acts as a synthesis of the symbolism of color brought about by the previous centuries as well as the writings done by David Bachelor in his book Chromophobia. I combine this further with modern ideas of semiotics that are presented in the “Big Flat Now” theory published in 2018 by Jonathan Castro. With color theory acting as the common thread between my most recent works, my primary objective is to simplify recognizable images, places, objects through the use of shape, color, and imaginative abstraction. This idea of our contemporary perception being flat doesn’t just affect the present. My other bachelor of arts degree in history plays a large role in my process of ‘making’ each piece. The ability to view vast volumes of data and records from the past, as well as using data to predict alternate futures, means that we no longer have a meaningful separation from history; it has become interwoven with the present. I replicate this through the process of flipping and reversing the same image, dirstoring it, until a new unrecognizable one is created. Flatness as a larger cultural concept acts as a metaphor for the relationship we as individuals have with the world around us. The commodification of the internet has caused the registration of information as well as the perception of images to speed up, and has closed geographic and time gaps for when information and news is received to an extent that is unprecedented.