The current technological advances in photography have diminished the physical and tactual relationship between the artist and the artwork. While digital manipulation is currently rampant, this artist uses less computerized and more mechanical means as an attempt to intensify the physical relationship through touch, density, and opacity of the material. While it is not essential for the work to always house the details of the scene, attention is mostly on the overall composition. The topics are derived from ideas and feelings that are arise from daily existence. As thoughts at a specific moment dominate attention, a selective process occurs to narrow in on the periphery of the main focus.

This work is a result of investigating and understanding time and multidimensionality. Photography manipulates time during different processes such as through the use of the shutter, development of a film, as well as scanning, editing and printing. In between each of these processes a certain amount of time is bound to pass. As such, the intentional process can be described as:

…layering pieces throughout different periods with various means with the purpose of highlighting the internal and external complexities of the work.

Communicating with past masters also plays an important role during this creative expression.  This is an attempt to empathically take two steps back prior to jumping over an obstacle. Understanding time as not a linear but more of a spiral process helps to empathize with the collective unconscious. Spiral shape creates shortcuts and eases up the process of moving though these realms.

Details Of The Process

Once an image is captured, the freshness has to cool down, certain amount of time needs to pass. This lapse of time is an important criterion. Such process allows the work to materialize fully.

Entering into the journey of the unknown is possible through experimentation. The dance of moving back and forth from the unknown to joy is the core of this work. 

For photographic print, experimentation with print materials is an unconventional approach bound with opportunities beyond traditional photography. This work is printed on surfaces that are not made for printing, which allows for the ink to be fluid and un-detained. The freeing aspect of fluidity results in the dissolve and relaxation of tension between the elements resulting in a natural merging. Colors drip and merge, creating details that do not exist in the reality of the scene. Thus, a second reality emerges. Final piece may appear to be abstract and may also loose some of the qualities that photography offers like reproducibility. Movement of the ink is akin to artistic expression commonly seen in paintings. Manipulation of time through layering and experimentation pushes a line between photography and painting, making this invisible border to be layered, especially when emulsion is brushed on the media prior to the act of printing or when brushes hit the canvas of the image created through seemingly endless recreation of a moment captured in time.

Moving from photography to painting requires an added a layer to cross over to looking at photography through the lens of painting. These paintings exist in this multi-layered and processed  photographic experimentations to emphasize the following perspectives (1) their within photographic qualities; (2) their reverse perspectives on this discourse; and (3) their ultimate place in the continuum.

Although my paintings emerge form my photographs, they are not exact copies. Photographs form the skeleton of the paintings, which proceeds to emerge a new reality through its own rules and natural processes.

Intention

Intention of this process of moving from objective to subjective realities is to facilitate the individual’s inner communication and to tap into less logical and higher layer of consciousness. Since identification and discussion of objective reality diminishes one’s ability to connect with one’s subjective experience, breaking down concrete perception of an object or scene and activation of the unconscious (or deeper layers of meaning making) allow one to connect with, step in, and delve into the deep background of one’s cumulative existence.

Influences & Philosophical Background

Some of these ideas correlate with certain schools of philosophies, namely that of Advaita Vedanta and Sufism, which have played significant role in the creation of this work. An integral approach to the artistic creation includes both whole and parts, values, multiple truths, multiple aspect of self (including both conscious and unconscious) , as well as existential, and spiritual, psychological, social, historical, political, economic and linguistic elements. My work is a reflection of where I am in the moment- on a continuum of intersecting cultural, spiritual and ideological realities.