This contemporary artwork is the found original old orthodox icon decorated with oil paint. The artwork is not framed. It is signed, titled, and dated on the back.
This artwork is the part of my new series of works in which I try to re-contextualize religious objects. By retooling the religious work of art, I intend to add new layers to the original. Through the manipulation of these objects, I mean to acknowledge, to underscore, that religious images can, and often do, manipulate us. In so many innumerable ways, the painting becomes a unit of measure of our own worth—I wish to subvert and question this measure. Apart from an interrogation of religious art and its history, my work is also an investigation of mark-making and, by extension experimentation in composition, color, and form. I am curious about the use of marks to signify complicated contextual queues and to signify potentially life-altering deliberation. Peripherally, I am interested in color dis/harmony and the function of color and forms (either together or separately) to convey purpose, meaning, and experience. Through a variety of media, I have chosen as my inspiration a color palette that is at times complementary and, at other times, purposefully contradictory or seemingly “destructive.” The material destruction of an object is subordinate or altogether inferior, in my mind, to the overall effect created by the aesthetic-emotional experience of the reclaimed and marked object or image. I openly play with the allure of foreign and aggressive new colors and forms, inviting these technical elements into the otherwise undisputed familiar and traditional visual territory. Barriers and obstacles are thereby erected between the viewer and the object through which one must negotiate an understanding of what is both present and hidden. What does the creation of new meaning tell us about old meanings or meaning in general? Despite everything, and true to my postmodern roots, in the end, as in the beginning, I leave the activity, reception, and understanding of my work entirely in the viewer’s hands. It is meant to mean different things to different people who are at different stages of understanding.
