Indira Martina Morre
Images / CV
Artist
Statement
Living
through continuous developments in the psychological understanding
of the contemporary human condition, I repeatedly ask myself
"How is my cognition and experience of the world different
in the presence of technology?" Spending more and more time
in the realm of information screens, sometimes I am unsure
of where I stop and the world outside me begins. Screens take
my passive body anywhere within seconds while passwords open
windows through which arrows direct my mind. We use passwords
to access anything of importance, take pills to modify our
psyche, and use invisible parts of our planet's atmosphere
to ceaselessly communicate. Brought by the presence of technology,
the sense of territorial expansion results in isolation. Duality
of being - my experience of presentness and remoteness, predictability
and randomness, order and chaos - is conveyed in my paintings
as a visual negotiation of a new paradigm.
The
act of painting is my deepest inquiry about contemporary psychological
landscapes. It is through the act of making that I contemplate
and process my dependent relationship to technology, and reflect
on a different kind of communication. Looking at the most
basic computer symbols I see a continuous and endless number
of clicks. Dots, circles, lines, crosses, arrows, … networks
… departing onto canvas where it all disintegrates to become
a psychological map, to become a hand-made document of a presence
in time, to become a mark.
My
recent body of work called Password: Sign Disintegration is
a contemplative allegory about contemporary psychological
shift in technology-driven, information-dependent, overstimulated
society. My desire is to expand and complicate these ideas
with images that are suggestive of naturally occurring shapes
and patterns (nets, maps, neurons, stars, globes…), in dialog
with shapes generated from human-produced, artificial world
(passwords, data bodies, computer symbols, pills, networks…).
I hope viewers will first notice the painterly quality of
the surface, the sense of openness and generosity of mark
making, and, only after close inspection, the conceptual underpinning.
The intentional multiplicity of interpretations of my work
parallels the multiplicity and complexity of psychological,
cognitive, emotional, and spiritual states in our civilization.
The
majority of my new paintings are predominantly white - drawing
in the form of painting. My desire to make paintings that
resemble a blank piece of paper (as tabula rasa), and function
as a diary of daily overlapping entries, required alchemical
painterly experimentation and innovation. My primary painting
process is preceded by the laborious and careful preparation
of a gessoed surface on canvas over panel. I am using pencils,
graphite, color pencils, pastels and hardly any oil paint.
This process allows me to alternate multiple layers of drawing
with thin applications of gesso, resulting in an appearance
of complicated depth while retaining a smooth paper-like surface.
The absence of the traditional visual pleasure of paint accumulation
is a strategy of inventing new ways to painterly satisfaction.
Although
one can uncover a sense of disconnectedness and isolation
in my new work, I consider the act of painting to be a constant
attempt to connect and communicate. I hope to honor my viewer
with a reminder of the immeasurable quality found in the immediacy
and spontaneity of human mark and touch. Rendering perfect,
utilitarian, and timeless signs by hand is a consequence of
my desire to access an imperfect, contradictory, time-bound
being on the other side of a screen. The sublime out of technology.
.
Currently
lives and works in: SF Bay area |
