The Art of Technology Virtual Exhibition

January 1 - January 29, 2022

The St. Louis Artists’ Guild presents a virtual exhibition of artists working in the digital realm with their art practice.

Juror: Andrea Coates

Juried Artists: Leroy Binks, Joshua Brinlee, Nicole Van Dyken, Amy Firestone Rosen, Barbara Kendrick, Mike Kearns, Luna Rail, Atila Salviano, Ria Unson, Eric Vieth

Jurors Statement:

What an honor and pleasure it was to jury this show of artwork created with nontraditional media. A digital artist myself, I was inspired to see the inventive works that were created with digital imaging tools I also use, like Photoshop, Procreate, Illustrator, and After Effects. The power and possibilities of these advanced tools excite and inspire me, and they help bring to life the perspectives of the ten selected artists.

As I narrowed the included works, I was struck by a common theme: all are new hybrid forms in portraits, landscapes, and/or beings. Hybridity is nothing new in art but found a great visual and conceptual relationship with collage, as seen in our history from the assemblage photographs of Claude Cahun, to the cut paper collages of Hannah Höch, and in the multi-media work of contemporary artist Wangechi Mutu. In viewing the works of The Art of Technology, I am reminded that collage has been the medium to speak to and about our times, whether that be a mirror of criticism or a vehicle for fantasy. It seems appropriate during our time in history that digital collage takes on that role.

Thank you to Zackary Petot and the St. Louis Artists’ Guild for the invitation to jury this show and to all the artists who participated.

Sponsors:

Financial Assistance for this project has been provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency. Exhibitions also funded in part by the Regional Arts Commission. Exhibitions are also made possibly by the St. Louis Artists’ Guild members and patrons.

Artwork & Statements

Leroy Binks

Statement: Distortion is an altered perception of what everyone else seems to accept as truth or reality. In reality, we all see things at a different degree of distortion. Is it in your mind or in your eyes? Is it because your senses are damaged or heightened?

http://Leroybinks.com

Joshua Brinlee

Statement: Societal expectations dictate that men should be stoic and dominant projections of virility, especially in the South. If you fail to meet these expectations of masculinity you are characterized as weak, unmanly, and effeminate. I explore these expectations in my current series of self-portraits, Masculine Projections. I project stereotypical archetypes of Southern men appropriated from Tumblr and Google searches onto myself, as I attempt to “conform” to their postures and become their character. As a man who doesn’t prescribe to the heteronormative societal expectations of Southern masculinity, I utilize my body as the screen and subject. My attempt to “fit in” to these types is a performative illusion. Areas of the projections are unaligned, pixelated, and disproportionate, while other areas blend perfectly with the appropriated imagery. The imperfections and clarity of the photos represent a struggle to conform to traditional notions of masculinity, while at the same time attempting to reject them.

http://www.joshuabrinlee.com

Nicole Van Dyken

Statement: I am a visual artist from Chicago with a love for vibrant colors. I specialize in pen stippling and digital collage and also love painting and pencil drawing. My favorite thing about being an artist is being able to express myself visually. I use my art to cryptically express my secrets, fears, hopes, dreams, goals and opinions. I consider my art to be visual poems. A lot of my work is meant to tell a story and I enjoy taking even the most morbid tale and adding strength and hope to it through color. My art is along the lines of surrealism and is often inspired by music as well as growth, resulting in depictions of lush and wild plant-life.

http://www.Artisticnic.com

Barbara Kendrick

Statement: In the 21st century medicine and science have drastically altered distinctions between what is artificial and what is natural. Our complicated relationship with nature stimulates the way I choose to use contradiction in my work. In my garden of images, animal, vegetable and mineral combine into hybrids. “The uncertainty of collage opens up opportunities for visual puns and analogies. It offers surprising ways to think about illusion, deception and representation. I am interested in that moment in which we identify a thing precisely and with the slipping away of that moment” “The collage itself is a hybrid with an inherent instability and slipperiness. I have a large inventory of images, and in assembling the material for a collage, categories leak into each other, leading to unexpected juxtapositions. I take these unlikely connections and craft them into convincing fictions.”

http://www.barbarafkendrick.com

Mike Kearns

Luna Rail

https://lunarail.vsble.me/

Amy Firestone Rosen

Statement: The idea of using clothing goes back to when I was a child. I loved cutting out paper dolls and with my mother’s encouragement, I created my own paper doll clothing. As I was exploring printmaking I thought I could use repurposed clothing items as my plate. I loved how the press captured the image of the clothing. For the slip series, I found that I was drawn to the patterns and layers that I could not duplicate with other mediums. The power of the press creates images from clothing that captures every detail. The slips have human figurative quality.

www.amyfirestonerosen.com

Atila Salviano

http://atilasalvianoart.com

Ria Unson

Statement: I am particularly fascinated by the fluidity of place and time; how events that transpired in St. Louis over 100 years ago still ripple through my family’s story. Is it truly coincidental that I happened to settle in St. Louis and now live in the exact location of the Philippine Reservation of 1904? Learning that my ancestor and I walked the same land albeit over a century apart has been key to my art practice—which has evolved into an exploration of migration, post-colonialism, and racial capitalism.

The question of how I ended up in St. Louis has led me on an existential journey—a decolonizing that has unearthed broader questions for contemporary society like, “What fuels imperialism? How does trade impact migration? And, what are the effects of resettlement—whether by force or choice—on individuals, families, and culture?” Through my research, I have discovered that the life I am living today, which I thought was based on my own personal choices, is largely shaped by external forces from the turn of the century. Who I am is what these power brokers intended.

I work with hybrid workspaces, blending traditional and digital media to mirror cultural collision. I go back and forth between spaces the way I navigate worlds and countries, accentuating the distortion that happens in transit. Sometimes I incorporate the paintings into assemblage pieces, along with found objects. My art is an archive of both my research and of my lived experience as a migrant and post-colonial subject; my practice, an act of resistance—creating artifacts that center portions of American and Filipino history that have been intentionally erased, misrepresented, altered, or excluded.

http://www.riaunson.com

Erich Vieth

Statement: Until 2018, most of my work has been photography, especially portraiture. Since 2018, I have been experimenting by blending my photographic images with numerous types of textures in Photoshop. My original images include portrait images, my own acrylic paintings and my photographs of trees and other natural images. I combine these images with various texture images I have taken to arrive at my final products.

https://digicrylics.com