Camera Experiments

I went out to a park in Los Angeles up in the hills originally to test out my new Canon 60D photographing skaters in a small skate park, but as usual reverted to abstracting my surroundings.  All of these images were created solely in camera, with only some minor color adjustments in Lightroom.  No filters or composite layering of any kind were used to create the images.  It truly is amazing what long exposures and inducing camera flaws can produce!

More Intuition Drawings

Intuition #4

Intuition #3

These are a few more intuition paintings I did over the weekend in preparation for my final project proposal for my Contemporary Art Studio Seminar class.  In terms of Semiotic communication, these pieces are descriptors of my body in terms of Index, which is a physical symbol made by its signifier ( i.e. a fingerprint as representation of a finger).  Literally, my body is imprinted in the photogram leaving both an Iconic representation of my physical body as well as a physical Index.  These photograms are placed on top of layers of materials which become a representation of my intuitive interpretation of my identity within the time period I meditate on.  I am interested in examining the way my conceptual identity changes as I work on these pieces, for I find that I am constantly defining and redefining myself in memory.  How does this fluid self-interpretation relate to my current body and how do the materials I intuitively select to create the grounds of the painting redefine my present?  Connected by a similar thread, in what ways are these objects represented in proportion to one another related to my body, as in how are the materials and methods proportionally and methodically distorted by the misconceptions inherent in my thinking?  I know this is a lot of theoretical jargon, but it is necessary to understanding how my art relates to modern aesthetics, and I need to be able to discuss my work in these terms in order to communicate and more clearly understand where these images come from.  If anyone would like to know more about these Indexes and Icons of representation, you can refer to this Prezi I made on art in relation to Semiotics.

Intuition #3: Reaching for myself through fear, foundations of medical paraphernalia weaving, stitching, and creating structure for my body.  If you scratch away the surface, you can see the layers and layers of evidence of what my body requires to function, and what I must consume to live.  My skin becomes a focus here and an obsession, as it both covers the marks of my injection sites, builds as scar tissue, and deteriorates in ultimate lipodystrophy.

Intuition #4:  How do I measure the worth of my physical appearance?  How do the physical side effects of my diabetes magnify and distort the imperfections in my body and how do I show the looming fear of what will become of my body in the future?  How much of my life is defined by this fear and is it the underlying motive behind most day to day decisions I make, and is this intensified by the affects of gay culture where looks are regarded as wealth?

Photogram Painting

Here is my first experiment with new materials incorporated with my photograms.  I've uploaded a process photo, since this methodology involves several stages of development. 

Fist, I experimented with the ground on which I would do the photogram.  I found this awesome gesso at Michael's that, although a bit pricey, has the awesome effect of shrinking as it dries and thereby distorting the canvas and cracking.  Since this semester I am focusing on the erosion of the body and false identities, this seemed like the perfect material to experiment with. 

Secondly, I began a painting with no particular image in mind.  Mostly, I wanted to choose colors and strokes that were tuned directly into how I felt.  I began with warm colors and smooth gradients in the top right, but as my OCD sank in and I began obsessing over details, the motion became broken and circular with a colder and darker palette, which created an image very similar to the perpetual storm on Jupiter's surface.  I was not satisfied with the piece with just paint, however, and I felt like the darker area needed something else, something that reflected the weight and pressure of the manic desire for perfection.  So, I went outside and started pulling up grass and weeds, covered the canvas with glue, and threw it on and painted it in.  This enhanced the feeling of mania and hysteria for me, and connected a medium which I was in complete control with materials directly from nature that I attempted to force into my creative logic.

Lastly, I incorporate my body directly into the image with the photogram.  In the case, the emulsion literally becomes a mask, covering the color of the paint in black but unable to completely adhere to its underlying surface, much like my previous piece Touched. 

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this piece, but I know that it needed to be created and that my future works will in some way be influenced by what I learned here, and that may be the most important thing.  I've learned more through my failures in the past year than I have in my successes, and though the lack of concrete "progress" in my mind can be infuriating, it is nevertheless necessary.

First Test Piece of the Semester

 

    Here is my first test piece related to my new series of photograms for this semester.  It is definitely a work in progress, since I am attempting new methods with the projection of images as opposed to just silhouetting my body in addition to the sculptural elements, and I feel like this may take a similar path to the beginning of last semester: I try to assert myself and tightly control compositions with this new and intimidating methodology until it ultimately breaks down and reveals something truer than I could have purposefully created.  

    I attempted to project words from my journal onto this fabric, but due to the luminance limitations of the projector nothing appeared in my first attempt, so I tried a double exposure and ended up with a gray mess (although there may be something profound in that no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get the words onto the fabric).  I then took the cloth and attempted to mold it to the plaster hand I created last week, and ended up with a faint impression of an object beneath the surface, which is what I wanted.

The piece is raw and unrefined, but I think that's okay.  Whatever I create from this point could not come into existence until this piece had been let out of my mind, and it is only the first step in what promises to be a frightening and illuminating journey over the next 15 weeks.

Continuations and Expansions

This semester I will be continuing with the themes and concepts I established in the fall, but this time the subject matter will be what I consider to be the third era of my life. This period covers everything from my high school graduation and move across the country to Rochester, to the events leading up to my coming out and personal acceptance as a homosexual, my first love, and the struggles I faced in molding myself to seemingly impossible standards as a professional artist in the animation industry. When I look back on this time, I feel as if it was a rebirth and a new found infancy where everything was possible and yet horribly frightening. There were no chains to bind me except the ones I clung to from my past and the complexity of my internal struggles expanded to encompass wondrously new territories. I can reduce this bubbling concoction of experiences down to one simple word:

 Emergence.

And so, with this new foundational concept, I have begun to examine the natural progression of form that would support my new themes. My works of last semester were primarily flat pieces that focused on images illustrating my struggles with the concealment and misdirected projections of my identity. This new theme calls for something more concrete and spatial, as it is one step closer to discarding the illusions that I had tried to maintain and, in truth, was the first time I openly invited others to peer beyond the screens of my fears.  The realization of these forms will be similar to my previous photograms with two exceptions:

1) I will be molding the fabric to my body so that it retains its shape, yet remains vague in terms of concrete detail.  The hand in the above picture is a test I did today with plaster bandages and is similar to what the fabric will look like.  You will see the form of my body as if there was a figure present underneath the fabric, still concealed but infinitely more concrete than the abstracted silhouettes of before. 

2)I will also be taking a more literal turn with the photograms by enlarging and projecting text from a journal that I had kept during college.  This act in itself is a huge leap for me in revealing things that I have yet been petrified to show. 

I hope to create a dialogue between the expression of my internal thoughts and physical manifestation of my body that reveals as much to me about this period of my life as it does to others.  It is an act of catharsis as well, for there is a lot yet left to express that has been pent up in the fortresses of my fears.  This semester will be a journey, hopefully a brutally honest one, that will allow me to openly discard my projections and reveal an intimacy that is closer to the truth of my identity and, hopefully, pave the road for a truer form of expression as a professional artist.

Highlights from my work in the 2012 MFA Show

 

Imprints

My work demonstrates intimate realities that flow behind the façades I project into the world.  In conceptualizing these images I call upon the emotional undercurrents that clash with the carnal self; a self that enables one identity to conceal another.  Using a photographic emulsion and artificial light, I capture in silhouette the presence of my physical body.   The processes and surfaces resist my control; the resulting abstraction of the literal form articulate the otherwise concealed emotional and psychological structures.  The frustration of my inability to fully determine the outcome appear in the image as flaws, tears, fingerprints, and inadvertent patterns that communicate the dissonance between internal dialogue and outward appearance, revealing without my permission that which I had longed to hide

-R.J. Peña

Tortuous

There were many times in my teen years that I felt trapped and overwhelmed by an intense sensation of loneliness which was often magnified by the opposing pressures of conforming to normalcy and natural desires.  For the most part I was able to keep these feelings at bay during the waking hours with my obsessive over achieving, but during the night when all of my distractions faded away and all that was left was me and my mind, I endured an overwhelming deluge of emotions from claustrophobia to depression, anxiety, and loneliness.  The periods of pain were such that all I could do was clutch my sheets and curl into a ball, riding the torrents until they inevitably subsided.

In conceptualizing this piece, I wanted to bring all of the factors leading into these events into the image and use the resulting contortion of my body to disturb the surface that my form is projected upon.  When I felt myself returning to these memories, I clutched the fabric and curled my body much like I did when I was younger and was able to capture not only a physical representation in the imagery, but a tactile distortion of the surface that mirrors the dissidence within my mind.  The folds created during the performance fracture and distort the proportions of my limbs and demonstrate my warped psychology.

When I viewed the completed piece with my professors we again experimented with rotating the composition to determine if there were any significant emotional/compositional changes and I was delighted to discover that the perceived emotion shifted based on the orientation.  The top left (also my favorite) feels as if the figure is falling and has been swept away by a torrent, the top right as if the figure is trapped within a box, the bottom right begins to introduce a sense of violence, as if the figure has been pushed or knocked over, completely losing its balance, and the final conveys the greatest sense of violence with the figure appearing to have landed roughly on its head.