A Fixed Image
Andy Bullard
Degree: MFA
Area: Painting
Andy Bullard
Thesis Statement
I’ve been obsessed with images for as long as I can remember. I think originally I was attracted by the mesmerizing ability of an image to say things, to communicate information via a language that is outside verbal discourse and syntax. This is also where my interest in maps comes in. Maps help organize spatial information into an image that presumably helps one understand and move throughout the world. I’ve always thought that authoritative “you are here” point on a map to be ironically funny and interesting. The fact that we culturally embed our own images into everything from constellations in the sky to mountains to commodity goods is something I want to question with my work.
Some of my sources draw from the glitches or malfunctions that result from an image capturing device’s (such as Google Street View or the iPhone camera’s panorama function) inability to fully record and seamlessly stitch together complex information experienced spatially and temporally, rendering the information into a flat motionless image devoid of actual time or space. What interests me here is the almost human like aspect of the device’s ability to make a mistake. Another source of interest for my work is the forms images take on when subjected to compression, mass storage, and the resulting pixelated byproducts that oversimplify pictorial information into shapes with only horizontal and vertical edges. Like trying to pack a suitcase too full; the items come out of the suitcase wrinkled, reeking of cologne/perfume, and or stained by a burst shampoo bottle. In the same way, images get stained and wrinkled, taking them further away from what they were and what they originally represented.
I don’t really want my paintings to “make sense” for the viewer, I’d much rather them elicit a curiosity about questions like, “where do images come from and why do we make them?”