I am not sure I totally answered the question in my rambling previous post, so I am going to do it in a practical way, by creating mockups for potential paintings and trying to explain the thought process.
I used wax textured backgrounds and graphics, combined, blended and layered them in Photoshop, changed colors, darkened them, and added images from my bottomless folder of "STUFF". I like the idea of giving a second life to some of my previous work in bits and pieces of images, and playing with trompe l'oeil as I did in the first Mockup: "Trompe l'Oeil Window"
Need I explain? Everything is a reference to current problems: the distressed wall to poverty, the envelope to illiteracy and education, the crucifix to religious fanaticism, the plumb line to the corrupt political system, the bloody handprints to inner city violence and unjustified police shootings, the target to the gun problem , the light bulb to dirty energy, and the girl to the unequal treatment of women.
For the next one, I wanted to go to a vertical format and very dark colors to accentuate the dark message: the way multinational corporations somehow manage to make money and sell their wares even in the middle of the worse violence and genocide taking place in the Middle East.
The third one plays on an esoteric theme and the way people tend to come up with stuff that boggles my mind: the Khabahlah, Astrology, Catholic Amulettes, Gold Leafed Pagodas with Enormous Gold leafed Buddhas in countries where people barely survive...
The fifth is the connection to my last big sculptural Project and my last shows: "Dummies with Souls", with the blueprint of the never built "Sepultado", and the pair of arms that were modeled in wax and cast in bronze for it in 2001.
I used wax textured backgrounds and graphics, combined, blended and layered them in Photoshop, changed colors, darkened them, and added images from my bottomless folder of "STUFF". I like the idea of giving a second life to some of my previous work in bits and pieces of images, and playing with trompe l'oeil as I did in the first Mockup: "Trompe l'Oeil Window"
Need I explain? Everything is a reference to current problems: the distressed wall to poverty, the envelope to illiteracy and education, the crucifix to religious fanaticism, the plumb line to the corrupt political system, the bloody handprints to inner city violence and unjustified police shootings, the target to the gun problem , the light bulb to dirty energy, and the girl to the unequal treatment of women.
For the next one, I wanted to go to a vertical format and very dark colors to accentuate the dark message: the way multinational corporations somehow manage to make money and sell their wares even in the middle of the worse violence and genocide taking place in the Middle East.
The fourth started as an attempt to incorporate some nudes I shot many years ago into a striped background heavily scribbled like inner city graffiti, in mostly cool colors. The model holds a slate with her birth date, and there is a frontal and a side "mugshot", but it has become just an anonymous black shadow among so many other. The seals are of "Justice". The old $20 bill is a reference to the private "for profit" prisons, and the way local police departments often use "traffic violation" as a way to raise revenue. The single opium poppy pod speaks for itself. The piece obviously alludes to the serious flaws of our justice system, and the ridiculously high rate of incarceration for minor drug offenses among inner city minorities.
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