Jami Nix Rahn

ARTIST STATEMENT

Art is cumulative. No new media completely replaces its predecessor. Printing did not replace writing, television did not replace radio and photography did not replace painting.

In this age of digital manipulation, I am exploring the possibilities of choreographing a partnership between photography and painting. While embracing the photographic tools and shortcuts used by artists today, I also wish to invite a conversation with the traditions of Realism in painting. Influenced by the history and genre paintings of the old masters, this collaboration of technologies attempts to depict the spectacle of life as we live it in the third millennium.

Notions of reality are played with when at first glance the rendered image appears to be a photograph, but quickly breaks down into a painting. The deception continues when traces of reference materials are detected in the painted surface. An alter-realism emerges and the viewer is confronted with the question; who sees the world more correctly, the painter or the photographer?