A #Digital #Exhibition of #Cut-N-Paste to #Animation

JULY 2015

First, Go back and re-experience the works again, then read this.

What you see here functions in several ways, you can decide what holds up and what doesn’t. I’m asserting myself through a synthesis of various mediums. If you know my art, then this experience makes sense and perhaps takes your perception of my work to another level of understanding. Were you hoping that I would keep making paintings? Sorry, but I may never make another painting ever again, but if I do, its context will have changed from what you have seen prior to this. Getting the last 30 years of my “static art” onto the digital platform is now a priority for me. It has become a medium in and of itself. I cover this topic a bit in default blog format on this site, but this “post” sums a lot of that up in one consolidation. Or I think it does for the time being. The subject matter in this “mini-zine blog template presentation format” (a temporary name for certain) continues to hold my interest at the moment. I write graffiti and continue to love the aesthetic of writing and creating graffiti art. Like any other advancements in the evolution of an art medium, as a participant I feel a responsibility to expand and push the perceived limits, especially my own. My interest is in the new media aspects of how I can re-contextualize and present my contributions in new ways. Fragments of aerosol cans, the NYC skyline, the NYC subway trains, the B-Boy aesthetic, video games, flat design graphics, cartoons and popular culture continue to fuel the infinite recompositions of the work I continue to create.

The common threads of the content are the variations and repetitions of the subjects and how they can be tweaked, altered and reproduced over many years. In some cases, some images have transcended 20 years. I like to rearrange them and see how new media platforms, devices, software and web tools will continue to rediscover what can happen. I enjoy making the work, and each day brings another opportunity to explore and practice. It is a behavioral pattern that I enjoy observing of myself, and in others who produce art each day. All of my works start off as a manually executed action. Mainly, a drawing turns into an inked graphic illustration. The graphic is then turned into a print making technique like rubber linoleum stamping, stencil making or screen-printing. Those methods of reproduction are immediate, almost as immediate as writting your name the same way for years and years. The process is addictive and consistently consistent. I love to produce in high volumes. More production equals more opportunity for variation. Some are immediate and some dwell over time.

The works above have been justified into a vertical rectangle, resized at random by the wordpress template’s gallery feature. Learning from the randomization of “a default setting” plays a role in the curating of this process. I have been a long term practitioner of creating collage based works. (I devoted an entire flickr set to a lot of the works created between 2012-2015 here) I draw inspiration from the collage works of both Kurt Schwitters and Pablo Picasso, but also from how the 1980’s NYC subway trains were photographed covered in graffiti. I love how the art on the trains created such a brilliant complimentary contrast to the concrete buildings, metal structures and urban landscape. The process displays layers upon layers upon layers. I connect to that. The cut n’ paste process is not a static process. Pulling screen prints, moving a squeegee, laying down paint, cutting into linoleum, laying down a back round, doing fill ins and then outlining, are all equal in movement and motion. Animating my work seems like the most natural thing to happen to the work. It is complimentary to the process as a whole.

Manual = Motion

Refresh the page on your browser to see how the composition changes. If you do that three times you will have a nice contrast of how the work re-organizes itself in relationship to the subjects and their animated movements. You can isolate each image by clicking on it, will you? Do the static works compliment the animations? Should everything be animating? What role do you play as the viewer of this art experience? Is a visit to a webpage “art” experience enough to satisfy you as a guest of the work? What other online or offline platform/environment would you like to see this work in?

Please share your feedback.

short-link to this post –  https://www.ryanseslow.com/iFoi2