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.

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.

1st Pieces for "Beyond the Screen"

    I did it!  I got the wonderful Jace Kerby to model for me, and composed my first human shadow captures in my darkroom.  The piece on the left is titled "Is Someone There?" and the piece on the right is "I See You,"  and I feel as if the pieces compliment each other.  The original images are the ones with the white silhouettes, of course, since I haven't mastered the process of turning the negatives into positives in the processing, so I'm going to get the digitally inverted images printed at the same size as the original.  I know, the aesthetic will not be the same, but it's fascinating when looked at in terms of the simulacra and appropriation.  Each step in the process delivers an alternate perspective and challenges the verisimilitude of the images which preceded it, and in this light I am left wondering which presentation is authentic in its representation.  The dialogue between my thoughts and the image intensifies the intent of the subject, the emotive response, and the awareness of voyeurism.
    What strikes me about these two together is the position in which the viewer is placed in the narrative.  In Is Someone There? I feel as if I'm am the voyeur, intruding into the privacy of another who is yet unaware of my presence.  There is an apprehension that I will be caught, yet the desire to remove the screen and observe the mysteries beyond entices me.  The brush strokes and imperfections reinforce the illusion of a veil between me and the subject which becomes ethereal beneath the weight of my gaze.
    In I See You, this position is reversed:  now I feel as if I am the victim of the intrusion, threatened by the gaze of an unknown other beyond the veil.  I am struck by a desire to rip down the screen so that this unknown may be recognized and I may objectify the foe, therefore reclaiming the gaze that has been forced back upon me.  I find myself recoiling, almost ashamed, as if this perpetrator has caught me in some unseemly deed when I believed no one was looking, and I am reminded of the gaze of the Other and the need to hide myself behind the mask of a projected identity.

The Darkroom is Complete!

Here it is!  This finished darkroom.  The final touches were stapling the internet cable along the bottom of the wall and filling in the light leak from the hole it came through and a few smaller light leaks that remained around the windows.  I discovered when light directly hit the side of the house the foam board actually became semi-translucent when your eyes adjusted to the dark, so we ended up having to put some of the ram board we bought for the floor over the foam board, and then just for good measure put some foil tape around the perimeter just to make sure absolutely no light would creep in.  I mixed the developer and fixer in two tupperware like pitchers with airtight seals, which I believe should be safe enough for the chemicals.  The one Patterson safelight that I bought isn't quite strong enough to give me enough light to work in, so I'm going to hit up a photo supply store out in Houston for a bulb that I can put into a standard lamp, which should give me the illumination I need.

 We ended up having to reverse the swing of the door into the room because it was too difficult to come in and out without disturbing the curtains, which was a light leak threat.  This way you are able to open the door, step into the light lock, close the door behind you, and then go through the curtains.

And here is my first attempt at photogramming!  For whatever reason, either proximity to the light or the intensity of the bulb, the paper seems to be ultra sensitive.  My first attempts at doing exposure strip tests at 1 second intervals produced completely black strips.  This image was created literally turning the lamp on and off almost instantaneously.  I think tomorrow I'm going to go back to Home Depot and get a much smaller bulb at the lowest wattage I can find and test that out to see if I can get a little more flexibility with the timing.  I created the image using my hand and shreds of a plastic Walmart bag, and painting the developer onto standard photo paper.  Because the paper has such a high gloss, the developer tended to pool in little puddles, which is where the white holes in the image come from.  Also, a bit of a happy accident, the words printed on the bag just happened to appear directly parallel to my arm.  There is something very appealing about that in combination with the form of a hand grasping through the silhouettes of the plastic bags...I think I'll explore some of that later.