The interrelationship between all art forms and media is a fundamental concept underlying all of my work. Painting, architecture, photography, film and music all draw from the same well of "Zeitgeist" (the force about the collective subconscious) using the intuitive personal unconscious as a ladle. Through the universal language of pattern formation, art finds expression for my unconscious experiences most truthfully in oil painting.

 

The physical process deals with the sculpting of layers. I start layering colors for the base, then erode that surface until I start to see possible forms. I then realize those hallucinated forms with the careful manipulation of oils. As a form of erosion it addresses issues of time. What nature does to corroding materials in a number of years, I do in a matter of months or weeks. The conscious design engine also involves the consolidation of forces within the surface which evolves into space.

This painting is a metascope, showing the direction of our next level of consciousness and visual perception. The whole captures the attention, invites scrutiny. Each shape twists the mind's emotive coil, slipping it further into complexity. Then it goes beyond what was created by hand by becoming a bridge to what we still cannot fully see. It becomes a bridge through the force of its subconscious intent. This force pulls the twisting coil tighter, becoming thinner until it is imperceivable. It can be a bridge because the point of imperception is not a true break, but a lack of acuity on the part of consciousness, much like a visual impairment.

By mixing emotively symbolic forms in this process I am able to invite the spectator into a mental landscape where the oppositions of feeling and thought mingle. In fact, all oppositions (historical, mythological, metaphysical and visual) are forced into playfully ambiguous relationships.

The ability to work in all scales simultaneously is one of the biggest pleasures in the digital 3d world. This virtualization is closely linked to my 2d artistic explorations. The painting is a scale-less mental landscape. The photographs are image instances of macroscopic to microscopic realities. Most are of human scale experiences that can often be interpreted in any of the previous scales.

 

This leads us to the discussion of abstraction. Abstraction in this setting is not for its own sake. It is does not stop at the level of expressing personal force and emotion. This is, however, the starting points in my painting. It is “abstract” not to free the 2D plane from its “window” function as early modernists strived for, but to actually regain it. This time the window is deeper. It becomes a mirror, microscope, telescope, x-ray, and ideally other metaphysical visual enhancers (metascope). These new lenses can work off of our collective (historical) and personal memories to relay visual emotions that approach the 4th dimension. I believe this is in the vein of the true nature of art. From within its poetic world, art is the front line of perceptual innovation. Conscious only of itself, it references infinity.

 

    - Al Vass