Remaster; the Psychology of Repetition
The Psychology of Repetition is a series of single images comprising a larger body of work that focuses on questions of hegemony, postcoloniality, representation, and imaging. The work examines repetition as a human impulse through a range of lenses, including personal confession, Freudian theory, and the histories of colonialization and globalized culture and economy.
Johannes Vermeer’s competence in rendering light and color disguises and lures the viewer away from his social and feminist critique of the 17th century European patriarchy. This is a technique I wish to make transparent to the viewer via montage. Composed of digital files, collages and pastel drawings, the series repeats, remasters, and reinhabits works by Vermeer. Through digital collage I superimpose a space for myself in the history of painting. Each image repeats the dimension and formal composition of a Vermeer original. The occupants, props, and history that constitute Vermeer’s works are conspicuously obscured, erased, rewritten and/or reprocessed.
While 17th century European painters favored oils for detail and verisimilitude, the Psychology of Repetition employs the material impermanence, fragility, economical and cumbersome nature of soft pastel. In contrast to the skilled and labor-intensive care with which each remaster is rendered, the “photoshopped” aspect of the quickly assembled montage is laid bare. The subjects and objects are rendered to appear physically collaged; they are not. Similarly, subjects that do not originate in the “West” might not appear to belong in the history of western painting; they can, and do.
