Dysmorphia

4'x6' (wax, salt, acrylic, powdered charcoal, plaster, plaster sculpting clay, playsand)

 

 

Today I completed my final piece for the semester, titled "Dysmorphia", in which I address specifically my struggles with body image, my diabetes, and gay culture.  My original plan was formulated in a previous post, but as you can see there have been some significant changes, all of which were discovered by accident.  There's a lot of talk about process here, but if you want to get straight to the meaning of this painting, you can skip to the blue section near the end :)

I began the way I normally do, looking at the intuition drawing to reorient myself on the emotional memories, and then letting my body intuitively express them on the canvas.  Next  I next began painting, using water to mix the paint with the charcoal, after which I began constructing the gash in the center with a mixture of plaster and (though I didn't intend this) plaster sculpting clay with I though was another carton of lightweight plaster and tossing around salt and powdered charcoal.  At this point I was feeling lost.  Everything seemed arbitrary and contrived and did not carry the emotional weight I had obtained in the intuition sketch.  So, I went to a crock pot in which I had been melting blocks of paraffin wax, and, since there were no handles to prevent me from burning my hands, i had use some oven mitts to lift out the pot.  Generally speaking, the pot was ceramic and therefore slippery, and this in addition to the lack of friction with the mitts its no surprise that I dropped it on the canvas and spilled wax across almost the entire surface.  Obviously, there was immediate horror, but these things do happen and I have learned to move with the situation.

So, I let everything cool down, meditated, and play with the new surface, discovering it was impossible to paint on but also froze everything underneath the wax which was awesome.  So I took it further, pouring on more wax, throwing n more charcoal, getting a knife and carving into the surface, spraying on a clear matte primer which allowed me to paint again, but what was this telling me?  I had done all these things to the surface but had not discovered anything.  But of course, this is when the revelation came.

When I first started dropping the charcoal, I had gotten a water bottle and sprayed water on to see if I could freeze the powder to surface with it without blowing it away.  Here I did the same thing, and unintentionally created pools of water that drifted across the surface, picking up particles of paint, wax, salt, and charcoal and depositing them in the cracks and crevices of the wax.  Unintentionally, I had discovered a way to reveal every mark and scar in the surface. 

How does his relate to dysmorphia?

Glad you asked!  I came to the realization that in this piece, the wax becomes my body, and every element that I added to alter the surface becomes a reflection of what I feel I need to change about myself.  These efforts destroy and alter the surface in ways that are mostly invisible to me, yet an unintentional element reveals the truth.  The water washes away the surface, picking up the superficial materials and redepositing them into the traumas that I have inflicted beneath the projections, forcing me to acknowledge not only the fact that they exist, but that I am accountable.  In many ways I do not see myself as I am, but only in terms of the environment in which I am placed.  This relative identification is corrosive because those elements are not inherent to my body, placed, instead, by the cultures of which I construct my identity.  The images of male models and masculinity are merely simulacrums of perfection, yet for me they have become reality and I am a deviation.  

You may wonder about the significance of the scar in the middle of the image.  Well, to me, the flaws in my appearance are the only things I see.  They become magnified to extreme proportions, though in reality they are mostly unnoticeable.  This scar is a side effect of my diabetes, called lipodystrophy (the deterioration of fat due to frequent insulin injections).  On my left thigh, I have developed a small dent where the fat has deteriorated, and though it's barely noticeable, I obsess over it enough that it is perfect for a representation of how I see myself.  

More Intuition Paintings

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?

Highlights of my work from the 2012 MFA in Visualization Fall 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

Touch

    So now I've gotten comfortable enough working with the emulsion that I've begun to do more large scale works, even though using so much of the emulsion at one time kind of makes me cringe!  The last piece I completed, even though it did not turn out anything like I had planned or expected, had revealed an entirely new direction in which to take my art. 

    In this piece, titled Touch, I draw upon one of the most vivid and powerful memories: the events leading up to my first kiss.  At this point in my life, I was struggling greatly with the knowledge of  my sexuality and the fear of the consequences from my family.  At this time, my father vehemently forbid any expression of being gay, and forced me to go to therapy in order to correct the mental illness I was suffering from.  However, myself, being as strong-willed and bullheaded as he, knew that this was not going to change.  I had known my orientation from the age of 10, and had spent the previous 5 years concealing it and dealing with the emotional consequences on my own.  But this suppression had a backlash, creating an obsessive desire to find someone, to touch, to express these terrible desires that were forbidden, and yet pulling at my core as potently as the desire to survive.  When I finally found someone who was capable of returning my affections when I was 15, you cannot imagine the excitement, the relief of knowing I was not alone, that overwhelmed my senses.  Yet, even still, I was terrified of my father and what the knowledge of this discovery would do at home.  And then that summer, at a friend's birthday party in Galveston, I found myself outside with him out on the patio overlooking the ocean with a strong warm breeze washing over us and the sounds of the crashing waves drowning out everything but us in this electric moment.  At first we were just talking, each safe in our own sleeping bags, but the longer we looked into each others eyes the more irresistible the pull became, until suddenly we were holding each others arms.  Each of us were so desperate to touch one another and share this simple contact and yet so horrified at the thought.  Him with the backlash of religion and me from the strong boot of my father pressing on me. 

And then he kissed me. 

There has not been another moment in my life when the touch of another has filled me with so much thrill, so much wanting and need, than in that moment, and it is such things that I now feel the confidence in myself to express outwardly in my art. 

    Here was my process:
I laid a foundation of an oil based primer with my hands upon cloth, using my body to throw and spread the paint, leaving traces of my palms and fingers across the material.  I then used a paint roller to cover this with emulsion, almost erasing the traces with the medium I would then use to capture my body and that of Gavin, in the position that mimicked my memory.  Because the emulsion was a bit tacky, and because it could not bond properly with the oil primer, the contact with our bodies loosed in and caused it to tear where it contacted our skin, and later while processing, giant holes appeared.  The image has become a mirror or the emotional turbulence I had felt, a suppressed desire to touch, covered with a superficial appearance that was slowly degrading under the power of this primal need.