2009年3月30日

Benjamin Swallow Duke

CRASH_oil_75"x 94"_2008

Awakening as Identity Matrix #2_oil_65"x 65"_2008




Awakening as Identity Matrix_oil_60"x 72"_2007




Actant_oil_44"x 54"_2007



SelfPortraitasLePetitJean_oil_60'' x 72"_2006



ManonFire_oil_54'' x 72''_2006






Statement

In my paintings I ask myself “Is this the way the world is?’ I reshape and retool my painting experience to answer that question. But while the question begins with the world, it ends with the work itself: “Is this the way the world is in this work?”

The search is for the world in painting and painting in the world (painting worlds/ paintings world). Am I in the world or is the world in me? I allude to my life, to writers works, to imagery and it is my hope that this record of allusion conjures and creates the same. I am referring to text, theory, idea but I am also finding myself already there, looking out to see in.

With this overarching goal in mind, lately I have been exploring figure ground relationships such that the figure is a composite of multiples: multiple limbs, multiple people and multiple places. The figures are composed such that they combine visually into a larger whole, alluding to the social group as an identity in itself- the machinery of the social order. I seek to locate content beyond the obvious narrative in the arrangement of the visual elements. Through these images I seek to explore the hybrid and composite nature of identity, the intersection between self-conception and social reality and how context impacts the possibilities of self-realization.

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