Organic Skins - Essay

ORGANIC SKINS

Since the beginning of the twentieth century the world became inevitably influenced by the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the Mechanical Age; new advances in technology and mechanical-made devices such as the camera, the computer, the phone, video games, and the internet, gave birth to new concepts, tools, and methods that have allowed society to change the way we perceive and interact with almost every aspect of our lives. For many artists such as Moholy-Nagy, Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, and even Pablo Picasso, these advances in technology became directly or indirectly present in their works, not only did it help artists to increase the range of possibilities to investigate and express new ideas, but it also gave rise to more fundamental questions that explored the nature, structure, and function of art itself.

For philosopher and author Walter Benjamin, the arrival of mechanical reproduction techniques such as photography, printing, and film, raised fundamental questions about the uniqueness and authenticity of an original artwork when compared to its reproduction. Benjamin believed the mass reproduction of art was reducing the worth of original artwork as it could be replicated easily and endlessly. In his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935), Benjamin argues that original artwork has an aura, which refers to a sense of mystery, authenticity, and authority that surrounds it, while on the other hand, a reproduction of an artwork will lack the presence of the artist as well as its own presence in time and space. For Benjamin, the mechanical reproduction of artworks was leading to their commodification and the loss of their aura, which ultimately diminished their cultural and social value. However, Benjamin did not account for these new mechanical reproduction techniques to become fields of art creation on their own, being able to succeed within their own capabilities and abilities while creating their own values of esthetics. 

Before merging into the digital world, artists such as Wassily Kandinsky or Piet Mondrian, whose early careers started with physically reproducing and copying what they saw in nature into their paintings, abstract art became a new path that allowed them to develop a deeper understanding of color, form, and composition. In Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911), Kandinsky argues that color properties such as warmth or coolness can provide a different stimulus on people, and in combination with shapes and forms could be used to create a visual equivalent of musical harmony. For Kandinsky color and form could communicate ideas and emotions more effectively than representational art, and it was important to recognize these visual elements as the expression of the artist’s inner feelings. In the case of Mondrian, he believed that geometric shapes such as circles, squares, and triangles could create harmonious frequencies that were pleasing to the eye while creating a sense of balance and stability within the artwork. Both artists understood that certain colors and patterns can create specific vibrational frequencies that can affect our brainwaves and emotions, ultimately providing more information about the spiritual and emotional power in art.

These characteristics of color, form, and composition are now well-known and used not only in painting but also across all visual art disciplines such as photography, sculpture, or digital art; providing basic ground and understanding of how to create harmony within an artwork while also using these elements to evoke certain emotions in the audience. As a traditional painter coming into the digital art world, there is an understanding that digital art-making software has computational tools that allow us to transform and manipulate digital images, which are the new brushes and paint of the modern digital artist. In many cases, these computational tools have become so advanced that now they mimic to perfection the characteristics and qualities of physical art-making results such as paint patterns or brush marks, while also generating their own unique digital qualities that contribute to the aesthetics of this new medium.

The origins of “Organic Skins #1” begins with a collage of multiple digital images that were part photographed, part computer-synthesized, and part electronically painted, all combined to create an organic shape on top of a pedestal that can be admired as a tangible and momentary expression of an emotion captured in time. These digital images come from photos taken of dried paint also called “acrylic skins”, which are the results of random acts of chance, to a degree, created by both, the artist’s hand gestures when pouring paint into a canvas and the liquid state of the paint as it takes control to complete the work while generating unique details and characteristics within itself. Once these expressions are captured, they are transferred to digital images that are collaged and transformed with the help of computer software in order to give rise to a new organic shape. This new organic shape is put on display on a pedestal to emphasize its importance while exposing it directly in front of a digitally painted background image, aiming to blur the distinctions between mechanical made art and the hand made art while ironically using the digital medium to admire and highlight the abstract qualities and the physicality of the acrylic skins.

As mentioned previously, the use of color, shapes, and composition elements in an artwork can evoke specific feelings and sensations in the viewer, which are direct responses that can be examined as vibrational frequencies. These vibrational frequencies are also represented throughout the use of paint as a fluid substance in its liquid state. However, we humans are also made of many fluids autonomously running in our bodies and with molecules that are in constant movement, so as one allows the fluidity state of paint to take form and create certain dynamic movement within itself, this autonomous movement within the paint it is a direct representation of the liquids and fluids that run in our human body. The idea behind capturing these fluid abstract expressions digitally and then shaping and transforming them to give them form, having the intention to make tangible the intangible, to give form and bring to life an abstract expression of an emotion. Check out here the video I made on Instagram showing the process It took me to make this artwork.

Works Cited Notes:

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Illuminations, translated by Harry Zohn, edited by Hannah Arendt, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968, pp. 217-251.

Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Translated by Michael T. H. Sadler, Dover Publications, 1977.

Lovejoy, Margot. “The Machine Age and Modernism.” Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age, Routledge, New York, 2009, pp. 12–61.

Manovich, Lev. "The Illusions." The Language of New Media, MIT Press, 2002, pp. 162-177.