ART Habens Art Review ART Habens Art Review - Special Issue #97 | Page 148

ART Habens Jean-Marie Guyaux Away from the constraints of commercial photography, the images that piqued my interest tended to reflect symbols of the human condition, the state of pervasive violence present in American society, and the deliberate and gratuitous acts of violence by individuals bent on tearing down the present without any intended thought towards a viable solution. Often already altered by such vandalism before my intervention, “Slash” with its remnants/fragments of subway advertising posters containing primarily facial images “slashed” by human forces, enables me to enhance, re-frame and create personal portraits of reference out of the mysteriously exposed layers of the past. A new beauty, often misogynistic, at once at odds yet beyond the original message. In “Slash” beauty that is addition by subtraction is introduced. The rough, jagged edginess of Clyfford Still meets the contemporary city-dweller Jean-Michel Basquiat. While my photography in “Slash” as well as in my “Crash” series captures an abstract reality that is the up-close remnants of the subject as it dissolves into an abstraction of color, line, and picture plane, my digital art manipulates the raw data of an image to create abstraction. In my “Icons – Americana” series I explore the world of our most well-known and memorable imagery and subject their digital content to non-photographic software. In so doing, I create new layers of pixels that generate a hybrid and mind-altering visual. The outcome is a mystifying re-interpretation of the image, recognized and transformed, imprinted in one’s memory, a journey of changes. With a smile some have called it Pop, Neo-pop or even Nouveau-pop. Special Issue 23 4 05