Matthew Silverberg - Digital Prints |
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Amber, 2005 |
Damask, 2005 |
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Number Seven, 2005 |
Robot, 2005 |
My prints are part of a cross-media series of paintings, drawings, prints and motion graphics on the theme of cultural misinterpretation and anomie. The twelve images, some repeated in the triptych, include elements such as fire, grass, fingerprints and as well as digital patterns mimicing silk weaves, tatami mats, tiles, kaleidoscopes, painted vignettes and simple drawn marks. Traditional painting subjects including birds and cows, plants and landscapes, cities and people are combined with an imagined sense about another country—Japan, in this case, a country with a strong cultural presence in California where I live, but one that to me still has an aura of the distant and exotic. This series of prints is my deliberate reinterpretation of Japanese culture. The images begin from my daily walks in the Berkeley Hills, where most of the photographic elements were shot. My Japan, an interpretation, is an imagined country of elegent artistic tradition, refined culture and technical expertise that is facing the dark sides of modernism: social rigidity, anomie, environmental degradation, sterility and corruption. The counter-themes of refinement and dark oddity are part of a long tradition of a fascination with orientalism. I have never been to Japan but have thought a lot about it. In fact, my experiences living in areas of great cultural diversity and rapid social transformation—New York in the 1980s and California during the dotcom years, have a distinct Japanese sensebility—particularly in terms of change and the individual’s response to it. |
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