Bailey Scieszka
March 9-April 30, 2013
From Bailey Scieszka's statement: By using image-based RAMP shaders through AutoDesk Maya, I create total environments for fantasy sculptures that both play with the inherent features of the program (such as image projections UV-edited as skins onto the NURB surfaces) and quickly realize complex sculptural fabrication (such as the traditional medium of bronze). The elements of the photographs have no true reference of scale or historical accuracy to each other, and therefore the given information in each picture plane becomes a literal reinvention of the history of man-made objects. Artists can only turn to reproduction rather than production. The producers of culture have nowhere to turn but to the past: the imitation of dead styles; speech through all masks and voices stored up in the imaginary museum of a new global culture.
The aestheticization of reality is my constant obsession and why I believe in representation processes. It’s what drives me to keep creating, distorting, and appropriating history into a brand-new pastiche. The imitation of dead styles is a new medium. Innovation is found in over-accessorizing to the point of lunacy (why do shoes need to wear shoes?). The often-anthropomorphic objects that reside in my current work make up virtual utopias, of my own historicity, inside a movie set that never really exists. My only proof is photographs from a camera self-built within the program. I want to create a mélange of references with tablescapes and landscapes that act as sculpture gardens for the fantasy bronze sculptures and their image-based pedestals. The evidence of the total world is showcased in the reflections on the bronze surfaces. When you look at the bronze surface you do not see it, but only the distorted images of everything that surrounds it. The contents are just more images.
