terrOrless phantOms

“When the very first perception of an image is linked to a structure of reproduction, then we are dealing with the realm of phantoms…”

- Jacques Derrida

Artist Statement:

The works in the series terrOrless phantOms attempt a non-systematic examination of some fundamental, but increasingly fragile, underpinnings of Western Culture. The working premise of terrOrless phantOms is that only a few, vague, curvatious shapes are needed for a lost cultural fantasy to take shape outside of ourselves. As such, these digital paintings attempt to conjure up a forlorn wellspring of myth (both collective and personal). But a myth that signals the dynamic critical intricacy of a contemporary practice engaged in the fragile wedding of image production and image resistance. That is why they involve themselves in an enigmatic world of dissimulation games of disguise and candor.

These images are made up of an oddly permutable concoction of sexual body parts largely based on my digital photographs of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. Obviously the work evokes a process of self-sampling and psychic self-mixing as well. Perhaps less obviously, the intent is a critique of the ideological excess of terror as engaged in by both fanatical anti-western terrorists and western mainstream media-govenment when it uses unsubstantiated myth to create seemingly objective representational meaning. We have been living through a rather pernicious bout of this recently. But I also wish to bring to the table a subversive reading of computational media by presenting, as well, a classical-based artistic hyper-self-consciousness that nevertheless articulates contemporary concerns regarding truth, identity and objectivity - and our need to question them.

Joseph Nechvatal 2007

-:*:-.,*:-.,_,-:*:-.,*:-.,_,-:*:-.,*:-.,_,-:*:-.,*:-.,_,-:*:-.,*:-.,_,-:*:-.,*:-.,_,-:*:-.,*:-.,

Thus when the God, whatever God was he,

Had form'd the whole, and made the parts agree,

That no unequal portions might be found,

He moulded Earth into a spacious round:

Then with a breath, he gave the winds to blow;

And bad the congregated waters flow.

-Ovid

-:*:-.,*:-.,_,-:*:-.,*:-.,_,-:*:-.,*:-.,_,-:*:-.,*:-.,_,-:*:-.,*:-.,_,-:*:-.,*:-.,_,-:*:-.,*:-.,

bury the evidence

explOsive suggestivity

waiting On a revelatiOn

this is nOt a myth

tOO bOld bacchae

dissimulatiOn games

disguise Or candOur

terrOrless One

disgraced misanthrOpe

hive mind time

mOdest libertine

unmasking jester

age Of prOpaganda

cOrrOsive candOr

dark bacchae

cOmpression transfOrmatiOn

meet my myth

underwOrld

chimera

nOimaginatiOn

RETURN