Low Epic, 2011
Your identity/brand is split between multiple internet presences. There is definite cohesion between the works on your artist website and your Tumblr, but your illustrations seem severed and separate. Google image searching you, your comics and illustrations actually appear more frequently than your other work. In Auditions you briefly meditate on identity association and representation on the internet and I’m curious as to how you intentionally shape this identity. How do you approach self-design?
The way I think is fairly contradictory so it makes sense that the works would emerge that way as well. I question how satisfying maintaining a strict, programmed artistic identity would be in the long run. Making art is for me very much a form of learning. I will gladly sacrifice cohesion if it means that I can explore larger fields of knowledge.
I've been uploading works to various internet contexts since I was 16 and can accept that I cannot control their circulation. I do contemplate the way I represent / have represented myself online but I can't completely dictate my "brand" anymore. I appreciate artists who are able to maintain a cohesive image, but I don't think I could be / would want to be one.
A lot of your image work utilizes 80's and 90’s aesthetic and culture as a jumping off point. From the midi backing tracks heard in your How To video series, to the gradients, colors and photoshop brushwork found on www.dawsonscreek.info, where do you place nostalgia, irony and sincerity throughout these works? Where do these begin and end for you?
Irony and nostalgia are difficult terms. I think of irony as snarky non-commitment and nostalgia as uncritical sentimentality. It feels unsafe to connect them to my own work. I ...
John R Math