The Contemporary Print Series - Juan-Si' Gonzalez

Alterations

2018
Digital print
Edition of 25 from the Portfolio Dayton Visual Art Center (DVAC) CSA

An interdisciplinary artist who chooses his media depending on the idea or commentary he is presenting, his most recent series uses digital photography. In Alterations, he recycled advertising images that bombard and invade our personal environments. By deconstructing these images, he emptied them of their original meaning, extracting and fragmenting them from their original context until all they resemble is what he called their “digital trail.” In their estrangement, they took on new significance, and seem to become a new kind of representation. Gonzalez printed a new, limited edition Alterations series image on 11 x 17-inches of metallic paper.

“The photographs in this series register gaps in transmission in the unrelenting traffic of media images. They came from television advertisements during those intervals in which the signal is interrupted and the emitted image breaks up, fragmenting until nearly disintegrating. What remains is a wake of drifting fragments and vestiges of images that retain some trace of that which has already precipitously disappeared. In these photographs, I try to capture and document the digital trail left behind by an image in movement, its ephemeral trajectory from the recognizable to the abstract. From the visual detritus emerge new signifiers that evoke other subjectivities, other discourses, and other more static and contemplative temporalities. On being severed and extracted from their referents, the images are deactivated and emptied of their content and original purpose. In their estrangement, they engender new forms, a new visual syntax created with the intention of disrupting the intended order of representation and mechanisms of persuasion.”

ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Juan-Si’ (WAN-see) creates work that reflects his emotional and geographical displacement. Born in Santiago, Cuba, he studied at the National School of the Arts and at the Higher Institute for the Arts in Havana. In 1987 he co-funded “Group Art-De” (standing for art and rights) and began doing interactive performances on the streets of Havana and underground videos to comment on social issues in Cuba at the time. He left Cuba as a political refugee in 1993 and moved to Costa Rica and then to Miami, New York City, and finally, Yellow Springs, and now Dayton. He has exhibited throughout the country, won numerous awards in film and fine arts, and is represented in major collections throughout the country. An interdisciplinary artist who chooses his media depending on the idea or commentary he is presenting, his most recent series uses digital photography. In Alterations, he recycled advertising images that bombard and invade our personal environments. By deconstructing these images, he emptied them of their original meaning, extracting and fragmenting them from their original context until all they resemble is what he called their “digital trail.” In their estrangement, they took on new significance, and seem to become a new kind of representation.