Date of Award

Spring 5-16-2014

Author's School

Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Author Department/Program

Graduate School of Art

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Visual Art

Degree Type

Thesis

Abstract

Remix culture plays an important role in the expression and communication of visual art. It is a discourse by which I strive to directly engage culture by cutting and pasting together already existing visual information. By doing so, I strive to promote an exchange of ideas and feelings between juxtaposed pieces. In this age of post-digital era collage, I am interested in the meaning and propaganda associated with collage and assemblage and the modes of disseminating messages via cut-and-paste.

By juxtaposing images that differ in style, content, and meaning, I am able to build panoramas of fractured identities that manifest themselves as overlays-on-overlays of distorted caricatures. Taking inspiration from sources as diverse as prehistoric cave paintings and street art mark-making, my work is a free association landscape that draws comparisons between unlikely references. With a single work, I attempt to say everything and nothing simultaneously. This denies permanence in meaning and celebrates the bizarre unknown.

My thesis work Reference Complex (2014) is a large-scale mural that investigates my own reference impulse – my compulsion to combine and redefine imagery via appropriation and collage. The work aims to create a shift from traditional perspective. By recycling unrelated segments of visual information, I have created a landscape of divergent space and alternative culture. The mural is used as a strategy to explore the potential of remix culture and the exploration of free culture that allows visual representations for a new system of social culture and art making.

Language

English (en)

Program Director

Patricia Olynyk

Program Director's Department

Graduate School of Art

Committee Member

Jamie Adams, Associate Professor of Art

Committee Member

Jamie Adams, Associate Professor of Art

Committee Member

Cheryl Wassenaar, Associate Professor of Art

Committee Member

Angela Malchionno, Lecturer of Art

Committee Member

Ila Sheren, Assistant Professor of Art History and Archaeology

Artist's Statement

“Collage technique is the systematic exploitation of the fortuitous or engineered encounter of two or more intrinsically incompatible realities on a surface which is manifestly inappropriate for the purpose – and the spark of poetry which leaps across the gap as these two realities are brought together.” – Max Ernst

In this age of post-digital era collage, I am interested in the meaning and propaganda associated with collage and assemblage, the modes of disseminating messages via cut-and-paste, remix and disorder. By juxtaposing images that differ in style, content, and meaning, I am able to build panoramas of fractured identities that manifest themselves as overlays on overlays of distorted caricatures.

Taking inspiration from prehistoric cave paintings and street art mark-making, my work is a free association landscape of hybrid animal-humans, humans wearing animal masks, faces, chaos, crowds… Horror vacui, mythological dinosaurs, hands. Child, self, ego. Teeth and eyes, medicine men. Rocking horse. Walking bombs, flying bullets, balloons. Santa Claus smoking a blunt. Skulls and drama. Wind-up car.

These scenes draw comparisons between unlikely references, and the crowded environment of faces, figures, monsters, masks, and sinister feelings within the work celebrate the divergent image. They are representative of the compound, compacted narrative – a single work that tries to say everything and nothing simultaneously. As such, my work denies permanence in meaning and celebrates the bizarre unknown in the arena of speculation and spectacle.

Permanent URL: https://doi.org/10.7936/K7V985ZR

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