Ifitry

Video art, 2014

The pixel is the basis of the digital image. Pixels are little colored points of light. The accumulation of these colored dots in a uniform size and in a certain order, allows the representation of the figurative subject. Would  pictorial representation be possible if the pixels did not have uniform sizes or these determined orders?

Impressionist painters already worked with similar ideas. Styles such as pointillism show that the representation or figurative allusion is nothing more than the coordination of masses of colors, that convey some meaning to the gaze.

Monet was one of its greatest representatives. His paintings of water lilies represented subjects from objects, which carried feelings, sensations, notions, intuitions and particular tastes of the painter. When observing his paintings, questions arise: What was he painting? Was it the lilies? The lake? Clouds? Was it what they transmitted to him? When he chose his colors, did he do so for his own aesthetic taste or in reference to the subject?

My work is a modern re-interpretation of these concepts that the Impressionists worked on. I do a study between abstraction and figuration, through image control algorithms, which manipulate the pixels of a single frame. The pixels are distorted, enlarged, overlapped and transfigured. In this way, an object is represented and at the same time rejected, through the manipulation of the visual material of the work: the colors and shapes formed by pixels, which take on a life of their own and at the same time behave like the subject, fluctuating like water , present an abstract image that still retains intrinsic qualities of a subject that has already been seen. The music uses soundscapes from the location where the photo was taken and relishes in the same game, existing somewhere between field recordings and electronic music.

The result is a moving reflection on the factors that influence the perception and production of an artistic work: contemplation, appreciation and observation. These last factors, present in the previous moments or during production, become central axes of this work, where the figurative image plays between abstraction and figuration, producing a hypnotic effect that induces a visual meditation.