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Regarding the “Private Auction” collage

Please allow me to self-review and speak out a bit about the artwork that I personally believe is the most significant that I’ve done so far. It’s about the collage titled “Private Auction“, and I published it last night. It has made absolutely no sensation at all in the TumblR circles, and yet, I believe that this is my best work to date (IMHO).

This is not an easy piece like the ones with a big round ball (e.g. a planet) in the middle of the frame, where the viewer just has to glance at it for 1 second, semi-understand it, and move on. These are the pieces that I’m actually embarrassed about, since they’re often shallow (yet strangely effective with the crowd because of their simplicity). Instead, “Private Auction” is a piece that has the most depth than any of my other artworks so far, and it requires more attention in order to be appreciated.

As with most of my artworks, to understand the piece you need to check the title. Some people reblog but they remove the title, and this does a disservice to my work, since without it they become lame, cheesy, or incomprehensible. I take pride to the fact that my art is rather accessible and hopefully relevant — definitely not super-abstract — because ~80% of the times I’m trying to say something concrete through them, rather than just sit pretty on a wall somewhere (or at a TumblR/FlickR page).

“Private Auction” feels like the still frame of life, or an old movie. We have two gentlemen looking at some artwork on the wall, with an auctioneer refereeing them. The auctioneer is holding a telephone on his hands, potentially having more clients on it. The older man on the back has a larger shadow, revealing the possibility of a darker character. As for the man on the front, he wears a wedding ring.

The naked woman almost blends with the colorful environment in the corner, even if she’s in black and white. She looks sad, like she’s miles away. She’s deep in thoughts, like she doesn’t belong to the scene. It’s only when you actually read the title that it becomes apparent that she is the actual trophy of the auction. The two buyers try to look casual looking at the artwork on the wall, as if they’re trying to mislead us, or as if there’s no difference between a status symbol object (e.g. expensive artwork), and a human being.

I have this belief that art needs to say something more often than not, but unfortunately, most art today is all about “fast aesthetics”, and the “wow” visual factor that lasts 2-3 seconds. In other words, it’s commercial art, an “easy to comprehend” art, specifically built for our excessively fast-paced life. I have a hard time believing that most of today’s commercial art will survive the test of time, and I’m certainly guilty of producing it, since I’ve done some such pieces too (e.g. “Restricted Space Air Show”, “Sunday” etc). But it’s pieces like “Private Auction” that give me hope that I’m able to produce something of some social importance. That maybe, since the work is mildly disturbing, it leaves a deeper, lasting impression to those who bothered to really look at it, rather than glance at it. That maybe, these viewers will be touched by the terrible situation depicted, a situation that is all around us today, and become more sensitive to the subject of modern slavery.

A video game dream

I see the weirdest things in my dreams. This morning I saw what could be a great adventure-action-mystery video game.

In my dream, I visited an old Renaissance castle, as a tourist — most of it was in ruins. The castle had a history of a “major event” that archaeologists still were not sure what it was about. When I visited the nearby museum’s basement, where they keep stuff that they don’t always display, I opened the curtains in that room in order to see better. There was a big sword in a rock (like Excalibur), and only when a ray of light touched it, I was able to remove it (when nobody was looking…).

When that happened, I was transported back to the Renaissance period, when the castle was active. I was told that my clothes are weird, and I was presented with a mystery to solve (and fight for). But my time in that time period was fixed (looking at an iPhone to check the time, while I was 400 years into the past). If I didn’t make it in time back to the portal, I would die.

When I would get back to present time, I would try to continue to uncover the mystery by searching for clues (since the “event” had already happened, there were clues in the present day castle and museum that were not available when back in time). Only when a clue was uncovered in the present time, I could then go back to the old time and continue with the investigation, and so on.

Well, that was my dream. I’m pretty sure it would do an interesting adventure game, especially like the ones we had in the ’90s for the PC (remember “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”, “Beneath a Steel Sky” or “The Dig”?).

Three months of collage work

I haven’t shot any art videos lately (although I will be buying the Canon M mirrorless camera that was just announced), but my collage work is flourishing. In the three months that I do collages now, I got better results, artistic maturation, and public recognition than I had in the 5 years that I did videos. I feel like I have a real shot in the specific sub-genre of collage: the highly narrative type that is, where the artwork feels like a still frame of a longer, surreal B-movie. If all I’m supposed to get is a single frame out of all my sci-fi movie ideas, it’s still better than no realization of them at all. I’ll leave the rest of the plot to the viewer’s imagination.

I’ve made 75 collages so far, of which 32 of them are commercial, but they’re all under the various Creative Commons licenses, and their high-res versions can be found on FlickR. I personally consider about 25 of these works to be “good enough”. For the rest, I’d prefer it if they didn’t exist at all. Most of the stuff I do lately are vastly better than the ones I did in the beginning, although my four John Maus collages I did early in the process are still among my best. I think that the guy inspires me so much that even when I didn’t know what I was doing back then, the collages of him were still coming out pretty nice.

Anyway, these are my favorites so far:
1. Rules and Regulations
2. Social Climbing Lesson
3. Catch the Wormhole of 3:45 PM
Runner Up:
Not Enough Sun to Tan

On my online shop, I believe that this is my best stationery card design, my best iPod/iPhone case/skin design, and finally, my best t-shirt design.

Still, I have a long way ahead before I become as good as Cur3es (if ever).

According to my viewers though, “Time Out” seems to be their favorite. As I wrote before, I don’t like this artwork much, or a few others that I made that look like it (with a big round ball in the middle of the frame, that is). It looks “wow, nice”, but it doesn’t propel art in any new direction, it feels like a cheap-shot to me. Regardless, this got 3500 “notes” on TumblR. Still zero sales though. 😉

Sometimes I try to imagine who would buy this type of witty, “lo-fi” artwork, and apart from myself, I don’t know of anyone who would like such art prints hanged on their wall. I know that hipsters and psychedelic art lovers would probably dig them, but I personally have no one in my social circle that fits that bill. I’m guessing that most of our friends are probably rolling their eyes looking at my collages, finding them cheesy or just plain weird. My husband, who understands my eccentric ways better than anyone, sees “me” in them though, he says that they’re definitely “me”. So that’s probably a good thing…

On the video side of things, getting involved with collage has helped me see visual arts with a different eye, so whatever video I might do in the future, it will be much different (and more weird) than anything I’ve done so far.

New collages

I haven’t updated my blog for a while, I mostly update my TumblR page now. Anyways, I’ve made 6 new collages since I last updated here, and 2 more are coming soon. You can have a look at them at Flickr.

From these six, “Cause and Effect” is the most interesting one (a different style), “Catch the Wormhole of 3:45 PM” is the most spectacular of them, “Dangers of First Class Seats” is pretty good, “Ritual for Multiple Portals” and “Recognizance” are just ok, while “Ruby Storm” is pretty embarrassing, IMHO.

In the meantime, my “Time Out” collage has become a big hit on TumblR, with over 2200 “notes”. I honestly don’t understand what people find in it. I even had comments that this is great art, but all I can see when I look at it is just a big ball in the middle of the frame. “Rules and Regulations” remains my favorite of them all. IMO, it’s the most artistic.

Sunday


Title: “Sunday”
License: Creative Commons BY-SA-NC 3.0/US. Larger version & credits at FlickR.

Unfazed


Title: “Unfazed”
License: Creative Commons BY-SA-NC 3.0/US. Larger version & credits at FlickR.

Time Out


Title: “Time Out”
License: Creative Commons BY-SA-NC 3.0/US. Larger version & credits at FlickR.

Unhid (Homage to Magritte) – Updated version


Title: “Unhid (Homage to Magritte)”
License: Creative Commons BY-SA-NC 3.0/US. Larger version & credits at FlickR.

If only you could see what I see


Title: “If only you could see what I see”
License: Creative Commons BY-SA-NC 3.0/US. Larger version & credits at FlickR.

Hipster Sheep


Title: “Hipster Sheep”
License: Creative Commons BY-SA-NC 3.0/US. Larger version & credits at FlickR.