Warped Perspective

Christopher Catalogna

Degree: BFA

Area: Painting

Thesis Statement

In these times, the internet is the most powerful tool humanity has ever created. Often anything that serves humanity stupendously will inevitably become our downfall. Social media, governmental agencies, and foreign powers are manipulating everything we see when we use this tool. As a result our world views have been so distorted and convoluted that we cannot even recognize each other politically. Frankly, we are all presented a curated slice of information based on our inherent interests when we use any site that mines our data. With this fact, we have become more divided than ever. Social media has created the political landscape, and we are all reacting to our own individually created landscapes. My artwork focuses on this deeply troubling problem by presenting landscapes as near infinite expanses of space and by using ancient deities to represent the magnificent power the internet has over us. These ethereal forces manipulate our landscapes, and as an effect, they transform how we perceive it. Our ancestors could only dream of the powers a deity possessed, but now, these powers once dreamed of have become a part of our reality. Manipulation on this scale has become so invasive, seeping into every crevice of our lives, that we have lost the ability to discern what the truth is.