|
ARTIST STATEMENT
"It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in
Eurasia
or Eastasia as well as
here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same ‹
everywhere, all over the
world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this,
people
ignorant of one another's
existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost
exactly
the same ‹ people who
had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and
bellies
and muscles the power
that would one day overturn the world."
--- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
Metamorphosis of identity is the topic I have chosen to speak of. This
series of portraits delve into
the ever changing and ever evolving face of the human condition. What
one
would deem as
individual identity is not a fixed thing, but rather it is that which
animates the day to day
experiences of social interaction. The triumphs, failures, hopes and
struggles of existence find
expression in those countless facades of profound inner change.
These many guises loom as foreboding dramatic vignettes that have been
blurred into a single
transfixed moment that simultaneously signifies the passing of time.
Yet it
is in the pondering of
days past that the tethers of uncertainty become lifted and the one
true
face is revealed in it¹s raw
intent. It is in the depiction of the many guises of transformation
that
these works touch upon the
notion that in an age of harsh strife individual reformation ultimately
functions as an act of
assimilation and is an exercise in self-preservation.
Uniformity becomes a forlorn and final means to shield that internal
essence
of sacredness at the
center of one¹s core being. It is the inner self and spirit that
remains
most dear as an untouched
unique voice. In time, this utterance becomes a resounding roar for
those
moments when men
and women look defiantly into a black tempest of oppression, prejudice,
and
brutality and walk
through that blighted path towards a destiny of compassion, dignity and
hope.
Quintin Gonzalez
2003
|