Translation

The next theme I will call "translation" for the moment, it includes artists that have used modern media sources as inspiration for their work translating them into paint. The imagery is sourced from a broad range of existing photographs such as newspapers, magazines, film, photo albums. Translating a print into paint transforms the meaning of the image and the audiences interpretation and understanding. So the process of translating an image is also one of distortion. I am particularly interested in artists that use images from popular press and how they dissect and scrutinize such mediated images. In modern western society we are immersed and consumed by such imagery and advertising. I want to portray the bias and falsity of perspective. This is one of the principle issues in relation to modern technology  - the lens - through which most people in western society experience the world; news, youtube, advertisements.

The artists that I have chosen for this theme/concept can be split into the political; who use photos from the press and advertising. Each artists deals with their imagery in unique ways.

Gerhard Richter
Turns Jackie Kennedy into a universal symbol of grief. The blurring references the photographic source of this image as while also being representative of the rain upon the lens or even the viewers own tears. 

Tianbing Li

Robert Rauschenberg

Richard Hamilton

John Keane

Andy Warhol "Big Electric Chair"
Warhol's silkscreens portray the indifferent, impersonal nature of imagery featured in the media and the anaesthtising affect it has upon the audience due to the constant bombardment of horrific imagery upon the senses.

Elizabeth Peyton
Peyton's small scale paintings depict personal friends alongside  historical figures and celebrities blurring the distinction between real relationships and the idiolised, comment on modern day celebrity worship. Peyton brings these flat, impersonal, airbrushed images into her world through intimate, sensual painting. 

Johannes Kahrs

and those that deal with the aesthetics of photography, capturing the its perfections and imperfections.

Franz Gertsch
Gertsch renders every aspect of the image in naturalistic detail flattening it like a photograph. Depicting the artificiality of the photo through his realistic style and choice of neon like, garish colours like a faded photo - or memory.

Becca Mann

Anya Janssen

Pakayla Biehn
Paintings from photos using time lapse photography.

Judith Eisler
Eisler takes pictures from films while they're playing capturing blurring and overlapping. She then translate this photo including all its distortions into paint creating an entirely new image full of interesting aesthetics. 


There are crossovers between the two groups so I think that they would work well together in one exhibition.