This sight acknowledges the internet as a medium where culture is permanently stored into a form of global consciousness, equally accessible by anybody at any time. Paying tribute to the future ramifications of such a significant advancement, this body of work is being exhibited here for the first time. The conceptual and installational nature of the work presupposes a reading strongly dependent upon one’s physical interaction with it. To exhibit such work in a virtual space created the need to adjust the above requirements into digital parameters.
The introductory pages of each category serve this purpose. They are a bridge between physical body of work and digital environment created by the architect of this sight (PA-TH) who uses them as curatorial tools. Abstract digital representations of the conceptual work, they play the role of a foreword in a translated book. They are made in order not to compensate for Benjamin's aura but to replace it with one of their own, one defined as such from the properties of the medium they inhabit. Thus, the photographic reproductions of my work that follow each introduction are not merely exhibited as such but are rather incorporated by the digital curator into a virtual exhibition space that simulates the gallery experience.
They are no longer mere reproductions but fundamental elements of another cultural system which bares analogous similarities to the one of their originals. Concepd is meant to do much more than document. It is a websight, a utilization of the medium to create a visual, digital insight into the original work. It provides the user with an aesthetic experience - a trip for the mind and the eye - spread between digital and physical world. Because ultimately, vision no matter in what form its dinner is being served will always devour it in the same way.
I am Magritte's, Duchamp's, as well as my mother's offspring. Inspired by all three of them I juxtapose ordinary objects in an unusual context to create conceptual installations. Instead of painting a pipe, I use an actual pipe and claim it not to be one. The object itself becomes even more dominant in its real presence, referring back to the subject it connotes. It is the source, medium and destination of artistic meaning. Displaced from its original surroundings and functions, it comes from the world of things to express and communicate the world of ideas.
The current condition of art in relation to an abundance of commodities has created the circumstances for a self sustained conceptual art where objects, upgraded from their plain commercial status, become my palette. Linguistic play and semiotics are utilized to complete my conceptual canvases. Subject matter is drawn from philosophy, society and popular culture.
My primary concern is the conceptual; form and material are treated as secondary, lightweight, and unpretentious. I treat objects as complete entities but also as connotations of the ideas they represent and, thus, engage them into a signification play between each other, into an endless striving for meaning domination. I throw them into a conceptual arena and you watch them fight each other. In the end, these visual poems depend on you to give your own verdict, to launch them into a career of metaphor, off into the realm of your imagination.
pd is also a semiologist (University of Kent, Goldsmiths College), and a conceptual copywriter (Rainey Kelly, Leo Burnett, BBDO group).
a roach passed by the other night
and then another and another
and yet another
only now it wasn’t a roach
I had taken another approach
as futile as this text
movement has nowadays replaced origin as one of the defining characteristics of a person. people no longer have roots; instead they are defined by their routes. however, this new concept of routed is, like rooted was, a give and take relationship. one takes from a place as much as one gives a place. the needle both extracts and injects.
visual hedonism has reached cataclysmic proportions. the eye watches and by watching it dictates the brain, dominates the body and ultimately shapes the personality. the eye becomes the I. an I that searches, meditates, worships, consumes, smuggles, loves, gets high, owns, forgets, masturbates, kills, plays, dances, always dreams but never, ever sleeps.
this work exists purely in digital format and solely in concepd. painting has irrevocably lost its aura. the digital age of postmodernism has managed to transform the whole history of painting into a mere image bank. what was once the epitome of vision, the most noble of art forms has now been reduced into nothing more than jpgs fucking each other. enjoy the orgy.
this work is a tribute to Magritte's pipe. adopted into the form of the moving image and the present continuous tense it deals with the erratic relationship between artist, art work and audience.
out of your shattering you shall be reborn
house music and its associated cultural movements and music genres have been called as mindless and banal, inauthentic drug-induced experiences. I beg to differ. what we are dealing here with can be seen as classical music adjusted to the pace and conditions of the 21st century world.
it formulates man's most successful attempt to humanize technology, to provoke something very human (dance) out of something very non human (electronic sound). moreover, it entails original cultural production and performs a specific social function.
the public toilet is the invention of contemporary man that most adequately signifies his manner of transgression. a politician's scandal. a lover's adultery. a junkie’s haven. a peeping Tom's heaven. the private space we need to perform our darkest acts and then flush ourselves back to the clean world as if nothing has happened.
the book is the greatest contraption of man, one that will never be superseded. ever. typically, it is also the most neglected contraption by man.