Sydney Busic
The forms depicted in my paintings and drawings include representations of figures that are manipulated and contorted through perspectival tools that allow the body to come forth and recede into the canvases. Grotesquely foreshortened fragments of painted flesh lurch out from the canvas displaying muscle and splayed feet, while entire figures are reduced to recoiled forms that radiate through voids of black paint.
From one work to another, the painted bodies become violent and terror stricken. Through these improvisational sites, the body compliments, reflects, and responds to itself. The work does not try to make sense of the self, but rather lends itself to the complexity of the self as it is represented through a body. The paintings depict the tension between the self as it is grounded in a body while simultaneously being dissociated from it. Through the experience of seeing the painted figures, it is intended that the viewer is able to viscerally recognize how it would feel to assume the gesture of the figure in question.
The forms depicted in my paintings and drawings include representations of figures that are manipulated and contorted through perspectival tools that allow the body to come forth and recede into the canvases. Grotesquely foreshortened fragments of painted flesh lurch out from the canvas displaying muscle and splayed feet.
From one work to another, the painted bodies become violent and terror stricken. Through these improvisational sites, the body compliments, reflects, and responds to itself. The work does not try to make sense of the self, but rather lends itself to the complexity of the self as it is represented through a body. The paintings depict the tension between the self as it is grounded in a body while simultaneously being dissociated from it.
My work deals with concepts of the self in the postmodern condition through the figure that is often contorted and exists in representations of psychological space. Using contemporary and traditional techniques of portraying the body, I attempt to deal with intrapersonal relationships one has with the self. The bodies shown in this series are contorted and manipulated with perspectival tools that allow the body to come forth and recede into the 72” x 60” canvases. Through the experience of seeing the painted figures, it is my goal that the viewer is able to viscerally recognize how it feels to assume the gesture of the figure in question.
-
-
This piece is heavily responding to two bodies of work that I have made at Otis that are centered around the idea of isolation. The figures in this painting are radiant, yet turning in on themselves and contorting themselves into agonized positions. When I had initially set out to make this painting, I meant to convey a feeling of intense longing in the loneliness that one can experience within oneself. In making these paintings on isolation while denying my presence, I had trained myself to consider the viewer's relationship with the painting more than the one I was fruitlessly attempting to derive it from. It became about a lack of relationship with the Self, dissatisfaction with my self, and isolation with my self when I had stopped considering myself. I typically dislike naming these artworks (on isolation) because I think it further reveals the void-like nature of isolation by minimizing data for the viewer. However, in naming the piece Old Neon, I am referring to David Foster Wallace's short story Good Old Neon that I feel is particularly complementary to the painting. Specifically, I'd like to point out the question the text is essentially asking; Is there an escape from the torturous self-reflexivity of self-consciousness?
All Fine Arts Students
- Jason Burns
- Sydney Busic
- Camila Caceres
- erick cortes
- Chandler Dangaard
- Molly Dickler
- Emma Diffley
- Amoura Gonzalez
- Tiffany Gutierrez
- Joseph Hernandez
- Kyaw Min Htet
- Yiwen Hu
- Katie Irish
- Delany Jackson
- Greta Karr
- Augusta Kokas
- Junhui Lin
- Lukas Mitchell
- Scout Parkerson
- Gena Smith
- Lindsay Stollman
- Latife Whittington