Macabre Multi-media Collage: Environments of the Cell
Among the Witness of Cells, 2017. Pigments, Vandyke Brown and Cyanotype print collage. (26" x 18")
This large format collage is the largest continuous collage I have made from Van Dyke Brown prints, and in the spirit of Hallow's Eve I share it with an interest in the macabre. Inspired by microcosms of cellular life, micro-organisms and smaller dimensions of existence and how we view them.
Imagery of perception and sight are concealed in the key bean-shaped features, as dilated pupils look back at the viewer. They are ambiguous and fractured, but nonetheless creates a sense of being watched by something inhuman but organic.
This collage compels the question of observation, and what it means to view or be viewed? What differs our perceptions and sights from the awareness of our own cells in our body?
Perception- Awareness of the Collective
Likewise how do we differ between the individual from the unity that is seen from a distance. Up close each feature in the collage is unique and has a motion and direction that it pushes, but from a far these features become equals and the different directions of the cells and their environments become homogeneous and frames order in the chaos.
Environment- Connection between unit and collective
An environment is an important idea in art, because it is a means of unity, bringing both the figure (or focus of an image) with the surroundings and background.
The environment is a complete and harmonious unity that combines both individual units, and the surroundings that present them, into one complete existence. An environment is a concept, an idea that comes to the viewer, to the witness who realizes how the individual parts compose the whole.
Energy Polarity- Actively Static
The individuals are full of energy and action, whether they be animals or humans, the cell's of our body, or the electrons that compose those. They are free in a sense that they can change, alter surroundings, and witness and respond. But one only needs to pull back your point of view to see these in mass as a scene of vibration and fuzzy fluctuation.
As you continue to pull further into a macrocosm, more and more of the chaos and motion of the individual parts of existence appears more and more stable.
Fluidity gives way to solidity, and action becomes static, all depending on perspective.
