11/08/2015
Just installed "Opia" at Gallery 5 at Emmanuel College Art Department in Boston!!!
The show will be up from Nov 9th to Dec. 14th.
Excited to give a talk for Cynthia Fowler's art history class, Visual Constructions of Gender Nov. 23rd .
Opia:
Opia denotes a visual disorder or a condition of sight of the visual organs. Often used as a compound for medical terms of visual disorders, such as myopia, (Greek, muein, to shut), short-sightedness, who’s opposite is hyperopia, long-sightedness. Diplopoia, a technical term for double vision. Several examples refer to impairment of color vision, such as protanopia, insensitivity to red light.
It seems our visual multicultural society is in a state of disorder; the western scientific eye obscures sight, establishing a veiled understanding of each other. Playing off assumptions and illusions, these paintings attempt to break expectations of sight and sensation.
In our culture we are confronted with idealized images of beauty. Glimpses of these images circulate in media, movies, cell phones, and so on. We consume these idealized images in such excess, obscuring how the idealized framing influences our engagement in daily life. Seen out of context, and placed in abstracted spaces motivates a different engagement with the vignettes of faces.
Fragmenting seduction or image of desire, I think, makes the experience for the viewers more conflicting and intriguing, hopefully inspiring questions for their own personal experience and participation with similar images. By seeing these faces out of context, opens the door for the viewer to engage with their imagination.
