Artist: Ulysses Castellanos
Exhibit name: Self-feeding Co-evolution
Gallery: Peak Gallery
Dates: November 11 – December 11, 2010
Interviewed by: Michael Hansen
Aired on ArtSync: December 10, 2010
Self-feeding Co-evolution is an installation made up of collaged images, altered photographs and sculptural forms that cover every available surface in the gallery. The collages are made up of images of celebrities that have been cut out from gossip tabloids. Isolated from their original backgrounds, these images are then blackened-out so as to turn them into de-celebrated forms, or “monochromes”, while still delivering a sense of earnestness and pathos through their isolated smiles. The monochrome images are then collaged onto colorful advertisements for art shows taken from Art Forum and Modern Painters. Although seemingly intrusive at first, the monochrome images are blended into the high-quality glossy images in the art magazine ads by the viewer’s mind, thus becoming a part of the composition.
The second element of the installation consists of pre-existing photographs of partying teenagers that have been altered by blackening out the images of people and leaving the mise-en-scene intact. The juxtaposition of monochromatic images with the banality of the backgrounds creates a jarring effect. The humans in the photographs are turned into blob-like “monsters” that sloppily interact with their surroundings like poorly made creatures from a B movie horror film.
The third element is a series of three-dimensional objects on marble plinths, which are then placed on mirrors. Some of the sculptures are preexisting figures that have been painted over while others have been created from scratch using modeling clay, which is then covered in glossy black enamel. The sculptural objects project a sense of oppressiveness and constriction, in stark contrast to the lightness of the marble and the brightness of the mirror bases.
The title of the piece, Self-feeding Co-evolution is taken from a concept by biologist Richard Dawkins that compares the evolution in the human brain with the explosive evolution of computer programs in the 21st Century, in which the evolutionary process becomes a closed loop that is self-regenerating (through the exercise of its own individual impulses) and thus develops sophisticated traits at an excessive rate. Within the installation, the self-feeding co-evolution of forms and images coalesces into an all encompassing and destabilizing environment.
-image and text excerpted from Peak gallery website
