Artist 4

James Welling, New Abstractions #30, 2000, gelatin silver print. 

The reduction of the image into an abstraction is what attracted my to this work. It's complex and beautiful to me, like an idea just forming or perhaps an escape from some self-imposed paradigm. Maybe this is the idea of liberation, at least for me it is. What i love about dividing space up into pure black and white is that the negative space and the positive space become interchangeable, mutually dependent. Maybe this is a love story after all.

Tech 2

Artist 3

Arnulf Rainer

Rainer is an Austrian painter/photographer. Somehow,  knowing that he is Austrian helps me make sense of his work.  In general, Austrians are a traditional, polite and formal bunch. They are a proud, cultured people and have a great symphonic tradition.  For me, Rainer's work is a kind of emotional rebellion from tradition and perhaps his own temperament (or maybe his family's temperament?).  Like skinheads crashing a society party.   It's somewhat juvenile yet liberating, mocking yet idolizing.

I like the idea of drawing/ painting on photos. It kind of has the feeling of breaking an unwritten rule, or debasing a psychological authoritative mindset.  Breaking rules can be devilishly fun, boyishly destructive, and in Rainer's case, passionately creative.

Personal Project 1

Artist 2

James Casebere

James Casebere studied at Cal Arts under John Baldessari, where they experimented and deconstructed the "truthiness" of the Photograph. He is a post-modern artist at the forefront of Constructed Photography, which means he designs and constructs all the installations he photographs. What i like about them is that they are based on the real but purposely aren't going for the hyper real but rather the clean, bold, reduced shapes and forms of the real. I love his lighting and how he frames his shots. Personally i love architectural photography, yet this is a refreshing twist. He really makes me want to  close in on his photos, get more intimate with their reality.

Artist 1

Joel-Peter Witkin • 1984 • Portrait of Nan New Mexico

I think his work is interesting for a number of reasons. He has a classic compositional style in the way he positions his figures in a scene. He alludes to historical and important art works in many of his photos. Yet where is work grabs me is on a more base, sex and death level. There is a type of voodoo vibe in the ritualistic object placement in his scenes. Sex and death, the beginning and the end. Where these two points meet, the macabre, the fantastic, the archetypes of mythologies emerge. His use of grainy greyscale and sepia tones seem to evoke a primitive tracing back to an echo of our deeper, primordial mind, where dreams and nightmares merge. We may be disturbed but we are compelled to look.

To be honest, this is the first i've heard of him. I will say as soon as a saw his images i was reminded of a music video by NIN. After a little research, i found out that Joel-Peter Witken had a major influence on the director of the video which blew a lot of people away in 1994. If your interested here it is.

Tech 01

Motion

Stop Motion

Shallow Depth of Field

Wide Depth of Field