Art Exhibitions and Artwork Descriptions

Click this link to see a zoom-view of "Dichotomous: A Bifurcated Society and the Mechanism of Fear"

          The painting, "Dichotomous: A Bifurcated Society and the Mechanism of Fear," depicts the divisive society I was experiencing in the second half of the 2010 decade and up to the January 6th insurrection (I finished the painting in March of 2021).  It felt as if there was constant psychic warfare in the political realm, news, and social media that haunted me, and many other Americans, day and night. This painting was inspired by the political and social turmoil during this time. I still feel traumatized, to this day, by the experiences I encountered on social media and the constant fighting between politicized news stations.  The divisiveness in our society led to violent protests that resulted in deaths and violent attacks. 

          To tackle this divisiveness and instability, I thought of making a painting of CNN/MSNBC battling Fox News. It was common during the Trump years to see memes of two people fighting but with news station logos covering their faces. The news became mouthpieces for political parties catering to its audiences rather than committing to journalism. Each group's audience cheered as they watched what they wanted to hear. Eventually, it seemed there were two bubbles in our reality, a liberal bubble and a conservative bubble, and they had their own set of "facts." The liberals knew the truth, they saw it in liberal news, and the conservatives knew the answers too, they also saw it in conservative news. Algorithms reinforced our radicalization. Everyone proudly and defiantly wore their political logos as if they were rooting for their football team, and the other team was the enemy that had to be defeated at all costs.

          This drive to win became more important than democracy and the voice of the people. There were just causes for people to fight; both sides will tell you they were the correct side, the just side, the moral side, but neither side was willing to hear the other. I was also guilty of this faulty behavior. I felt like a puppet or robot for a political party. I fed myself what I wanted to believe. I became an echo chamber.

          Normally when opposing forces are depicted in a piece of art, there is a clear right or wrong character. There is a yin and yang, protagonist and antagonist, hero and villain, etc. But I, now, do not feel there were clear winners and losers, but we were victims of our biology, specifically victims of fear. The fact that we were adherents to a team while villainizing the other, inspired mistrust, paranoia, and triggered flight or fight responses, rooted in fear. This fear and mistrust lead to stereotypes and conspiratorial accusations directed at the opposing sides. This was a common behavior inherent on all sides, a natural human response that drove both sides, propelled by fear. So divided we may be in our beliefs, we are all subjected and controlled by our human nature, the "Mechanisms of Fear." These mechanisms of fear bifurcated our society into radicalized echo chambers and conspiratorial thought.

          I felt everyone was guilty of being wrong, though, but we all believed we were right, no matter the side. No one was perfect, and we became victims of our weakness as humans. Fear of the other side engulfed us. We developed conspiracy theories about each other. No one listened to anyone outside of their echo chambers. So, I made a piece of art depicting two similar robot creatures, a symbol of our ego, battling each other. Masses in society became robots to their political affiliations and lost the ability to have empathy and see through the other's eyes, and we became puppets to our instinctual drives rooted in fear. Maybe beliefs were different but the same underlying, human, biological, mechanisms instinctually responded to the situation, and all sides operated through the "Mechanisms of Fear." Maybe we should aspire to a society that doesn't feed and drive our inherent biological nature, "Mechanisms of Fear." 

The construction:

Stage 1:  I established the underpainting and structured the drawing and values. 

Stage 2: I began to break down the planar structures into linear patterns

I used fine liner brushes at this stage.

          Eventually, by adding enough color, I reached the final result creating a web of flowing linear patterns. The patterns, I feel, make the image more esoteric, creating scintillation effects that cause the painting to shimmer. The color is inspired by the Divisionist technique, which adds another layer to the divisional concept of the art. The linear patterns feel like a code, a bar code, or ones and zeros, adding to the mechanistic aspect of the painting. The eyes are protruding from the robots, intrusively protruding into each other's space. The legs and arms have packman-looking clamps with sensory nodules, doubling as attachments or consumption mechanisms. Both robots split the composition in half, like a yin and yang, except they both are yin or antagonistic. Each robot has antennas that connect to a plasma or radio source. Through this, each robot connects to its intellectual source, it's CNN/MSNBC or Fox News programming. Each robot connects to its political party and ideology they adhere to, and each acts out its robotic part. I specifically did not give them an identity because the concept can be applied to many human dualities. 

Click this link for more pictures.