STUDIO23

I’ve been considering the notion of the self as an aggregate of separate identities,cobbled loosely together from the disparate facades we present both to the worldand ourselves. This is not only reflected in the imagery employed in my work, butwas also the result of my process, particularly how much of the work is constructedfrom hundreds of individual pieces of hand-painted paper.

 

Over the years, approaches in the studio have involved several “off-canvas”processes: glass-plate dry transfer, crude monoprint techniques, and the creation ofmyriad types of painted surfaces. These techniques often rely on activities oftransference and obfuscation, resulting in imagery that’s compromised orincomplete. Eventually this prompted me to consider how memory informs and isinformed by the dynamic construction of the self.

 

Often casting my work through the lens of theater and still life, I’d been intriguedwith the idea of reality as performance. Studies in quantum physics have suggestedthat light and matter behave differently depending on whether or not they are beingobserved. A poetic reading of this renders the world around us essentially a facadeor something akin to a shifting theater set. Hence, the work had come to reflect onthe rather absurd stances the human psyche manages to get itself into as itnavigates this unsteady ground beneath our collective feet.

 

For some time now, these were some of the intertwined themes my practice hasasked me to consider, and that fact remains. Yet the last 18 months has seen mywork both expand its scope and narrow its focus. The 10,000 foot view I had beentaking of identity, memory and the absurdity of experience has dropped down toeye level. Thematic branches invariably appear. I’ve come to encourage myself tofollow these tributaries, and have find myself using new approaches, withdecreased interest in uniformity of style or technique from piece to piece. Newapproaches in the studio bring new questions. Often those questions are farreaching, recently they’ve become more personal in nature, prompting yet newapproaches along with some that I believed had long since atrophied.

 

As always, these processes are the conduit to my inquiries, implicitly informing thethematic thrust of the work rather than being the product of the reverse. I am notseeking to illustrate what intrigues me, only to reveal my rather absurd path ofinquiry. When I enter the studio, I try not to begin with an idea as much as I endeavor to arrive at one.

David Hytone