Warmth Through the Night (Invited)

I investigate and utilize the imagery and symbolism of technological ideology and mythology, and how these images and symbols reinforce a sense of dominance over the environment and the rest of humanity. In recent work, I have forced together elements of this imagery with images of their unacceptable consequences. These are skeptical paintings, depicting mounds of old and obsolete computers and televisions rupturing the crisp, wire-frame façade of virtualesque scenes. Computers and televisions (these amalgams of plastic, heavy metals, and other toxic wastes, these transmitters of fantasy, ideology, identity, and creators of virtual worlds) are depicted as accumulating waste in the process of becoming toxic nightmares. Seen in the act of transmission, their screens flicker on and off to display scenes of pride and shame, glory and disgust, myth tainted with visions of what we wish to ignore or conceal about ourselves and our history.

Jon Elliott
Albright College