A few months back I sent one of the Private Message paintings over to Fountain Street for their summer show which was juried by Juniper Rag. That painting was selected best in show, so they invited me back for another exhibition.
I am assuming that they expected me to show up with some more tight realism but, after some gentle persuasion they agreed to host some of the Glitch paintings instead.
(Is this why nobody invites me to show anymore?)
The show will include a selection of paintings that take range approaches to translating corrupted video stills. Alongside the work of Delany Conner and Robert Sullivan.
I’m looking forward to getting some reactions to all my attempts to find beauty within the chaos of the glitches so definitely come out to the opening reception and give me your best/worst critique of the series.
For details, head over to fsfaboston.com
Opening reception Friday November 3rd
On view at Fountain Street Gallery from November 2nd through the 26th
A little more about the series:
Using traditional painting techniques but relying on heavily manipulated digital image files as reference material, these paintings explore relationships in the social media age, and the complicated connections between our digital and real world lives.
The algorithms that run so much of our lives have a hard time understanding us, just as we have a hard time understanding each other. They operate with the biases of their creators. They tend towards simple solutions when situations demand nuance. They struggle with the unexpected.
To create the montages used for these paintings, people are invited into the studio to collaborate on the creation of series of short video clips that will be layered together into the montages. These videos are digitally broken using a variety of techniques that result in a video that is still playable but will visually degrade and glitch in unpredictable and interesting ways. For instance, to create the image used for the painting, “Glitch Caused By The Word No,” an audio file containing the model speaking the word “no” is cut into the video montage as if it was a piece of video. This creates a momentary disruption in the video playback and the most impactful frames are used as reference material for the paintings.
The images created when these videos of simple human moments are misinterpreted by the playback algorithms are often violent and chaotic, mirroring the pain caused by our own mistakes and misunderstandings.
