Culture / Center / Memory (pigmented ink print on canvas, 5 X 12 feet, 2011)
The underlying transformed photograph in this piece deals with the basic foundation from which our culture, our civilization, and our art—emerge. In this piece the three boulders are located at the geographic center of Europe, just outside of Vilnius, Lithuania. Our western culture has emerged from European foundations.
Quite fittingly, this piece is currently on display as part of To Lithuania with Love exhibit, at the ARKA gallery in Vilnius. This gallery is one of the leading contemporary art galleries, and is operated by the Lithuanian Artists’ Association. This exhibit will travel to several art museums across Lithuania.
The six pieces of the Memory series have emerged from previous works. Drawings of neurons were subtracted from the background color, revealing deeper layers of underlying art works, underlying thoughts and memories. The images were photographic pieces that I had extensively transformed. From neuronal complexity, thoughts, words and philosophy emerge.
My own MRI brain scan images and electroencephalogram (EEG, brain wave) tracings are incorporated. The scans and tracings appear in multiple locations in each art work—very subtly present and difficult to find, but discoverable. These art works have emerged from my own brain’s structural organization, from my own brain’s electrical activity.
In this series image coloration, intensity, and lustre were modified. These changes correspond to the modifications that take place in our own memories as we recall them. Whenever we remember past events, current events modify them, such that subsequently we recall them differently. Our memories continuously change as they are recollected. An analogous process took place in the Memory series.
A notable visual effect is the 3-dimensional canvas surface. When looking at the works at a sharp angle, the neuronal profiles protrude outwardly. The appearance is similar to that of veins on your hand. This 3-dimensional surface gives the pieces a palpable, living, biologic quality. This occurred because the drying process of the EFI VUTEk GS3200, high definition printer.
Four pieces in this series have intrinsic Canadian roots, the red, purple, blue and green pieces: http://www.plioplys.com/memory.php. In each case the underlying photographs were of outdoor installations that I had created in the Canadian high arctic: Great Slave Lake (Northwest Territories), Cornwallis Island, Cambridge Bay on Victoria Island, and Gris Fiord on Ellesmere Island (all three located in Nunavut).