The continuation of Virtual Portraits/Sculptures series
Recalling the elements of classical sculpture, Virtual Portraits is a reinterpretation of the Surrealist collage employing the visual tropes of office décor and clip art of the 1980s. The material subject of the series is the human species on a cosmic scale observed through emergence of digital intelligence. Clippings of virtual and actual material are integrated to mesh found and produced images in an attempt to reconstruct visual language to thus assemble meaning.
Virtual Portraits comments on the clinical presentation contemporary art institutions have inherited since WWII and the inability to produce kitsch as art; the assertion of “slick” aesthetic must be incorporated into a work of art in order access “high art” mode of processing. The use of 1980s aesthetics allows for a contained but non-gravitational assortment in addition to a summoning of style born through purely technological means.
The application of collage outside of the surrealist gesture lends itself to deterritorialization (Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus), addressing the relationship of desire to “reality” within capitalist society. The work aims to visually entrap the viewer and materially compound the classical sculptural and software-based signifiers as one moves from one image to the next.
