Jason Reynaga
Jason Reynaga - Molecular Camouflage (Detail)
Artist Statement
As an artist, my focus remains conceptually motivated with an interdisciplinary approach to a diverse combination of two and three-dimensional media and disciplines. Using my own escapist love of comic book, video game, toy and movie culture, my current work explores an increasingly dangerous and unstable world that is affected, informed, entertained, and fueled by a technologically driven global popular culture. I have grown increasingly fascinated by the complex strategies and arsenals of seductive devices used by corporate and media industries to manipulate consumers.
In my works, beautiful displays of color-rich, multidimensional surfaces and materials are intended to seduce and captivate my viewers on a sensory level, while a more subdued intellectual palette of visual metaphor and socio-political context probe much deeper. Whether shooting flocking fibers, firing paintball pellets, or launching Nerf darts at my substrates with a gun, I seek purposeful connections that will further understanding and provoke an emotional or intellectual response.
As the battle between right and wrong, good and evil plays out in the fabric of our technologically driven and shielded lives, ordinary people jack in to gear up, take sides and wage war from within the safety and the comfort of their own homes. Both young and old adorn their super human powers with the press of a glowing button, and like medieval warriors in an electronic age, our digitally enhanced heroes retaliate with a lustful vengeance against the doom, wielding their mightiest high-tech weapon of all, hope.
Where lies the distinction between hero, villain and victim, right and wrong, real and unreal? What impact, if any, do escapist fantasies have on the choices we make in this world? How do we define ourselves and within what context? As children and as adults, we must sift through the consumer-driven barrage of seductively captivating and often idealized images of hostility and aggression to discover the truth that lies beyond the manufactured veil of glorious destruction.
As an artist, my focus remains conceptually motivated with an interdisciplinary approach to a diverse combination of two and three-dimensional media and disciplines. Using my own escapist love of comic book, video game, toy and movie culture, my current work explores an increasingly dangerous and unstable world that is affected, informed, entertained, and fueled by a technologically driven global popular culture. I have grown increasingly fascinated by the complex strategies and arsenals of seductive devices used by corporate and media industries to manipulate consumers.
In my works, beautiful displays of color-rich, multidimensional surfaces and materials are intended to seduce and captivate my viewers on a sensory level, while a more subdued intellectual palette of visual metaphor and socio-political context probe much deeper. Whether shooting flocking fibers, firing paintball pellets, or launching Nerf darts at my substrates with a gun, I seek purposeful connections that will further understanding and provoke an emotional or intellectual response.
As the battle between right and wrong, good and evil plays out in the fabric of our technologically driven and shielded lives, ordinary people jack in to gear up, take sides and wage war from within the safety and the comfort of their own homes. Both young and old adorn their super human powers with the press of a glowing button, and like medieval warriors in an electronic age, our digitally enhanced heroes retaliate with a lustful vengeance against the doom, wielding their mightiest high-tech weapon of all, hope.
Where lies the distinction between hero, villain and victim, right and wrong, real and unreal? What impact, if any, do escapist fantasies have on the choices we make in this world? How do we define ourselves and within what context? As children and as adults, we must sift through the consumer-driven barrage of seductively captivating and often idealized images of hostility and aggression to discover the truth that lies beyond the manufactured veil of glorious destruction.
