Subjectivities of Human Output; an Interview with Chad Wys
Chad Wys is a self described visual conceptual artist, designer, and writer, currently based in Illinois. Our conversation on his particular output existed in the time/space continuum known colloquially as email—our connection was entirely digital. This interview has been condensed and edited.
Greer Gainer: I experienced the pieces from your Nocturne series online, which resulted in a frustrating viewing experience that actually helped your images stay in the forefront of my mind for several weeks. In viewing the images through the computer screen, I felt that I was getting a collapsed, surfaced glimpse, and I wanted to know more about the specifics of the medium and what I was actually seeing. In some ways, formally speaking, I wanted to figure it out, but the screen—what was connecting me to your work—was stopping me from being able to connect. I think this speaks to some level of your work—the loaded presence of the absent.
Chad Wys: In setting out to create the Nocturne images, the goal was to confront, head-on, the sorts of feelings you’ve touched upon in your question: the disconnectedness to the original and the ambiguous nature of the reproduction. The subject of the image is formally stripped of its tangible three-dimensionality, in many cases it is stripped of its context and "purpose"/"meaning" as well. I’m working with third-, fourth-, fifth-, or tenth-hand digital reproductions. At this point the “paintings” exists as mathematical equations within the computer’s memory bank.
My goal is to bring emphasis to the “aura-less” (in the words of Walter Benjamin) reproductions that share few of the traits of the original painting, and I also further confound the purposes of these images by adding elements of my own.
I have never been a traditional studio artist, and so the perspective I have as I approach the creation of my work is almost exclusively from the side of the theorist, philosopher, and art historian.
So, is there a canvas involved? Actual paint?
Those works are totally digital — except when they’re not, as in printed form.
It seems, then, that they are best realized on the screen, as non-objects, strictly as visual manifestations of digital code. In some ways, the viewing of “art” in this manner subverts the gallery and art marketplace, and results in an increased viewing, often un-paying, public. With this in mind, in what setting do you think your images in these series belong? Where do you dream that they land?
I seldom, if ever, imagine how my work will be received, sold, or shown — which is curious because those are the qualities I focus on most in my academic research. Perhaps it is my knowledge of the artificiality of those qualities — being shown, sold, and admired — that causes me to concentrate on other things when it comes time for me to create something of my own.
I think that I must be a performance artist because my engagement with the image or object is really where most of my plans stop. I seldom know what I’m going to do before I begin experimenting with various media, the execution is improvised in virtually every case, and the result is often a mystery until it's revealed. As such, despite knowing full well as I do the politics of an art world where art becomes an object to be sold and displayed, I don’t fantasize much about where my work will end up or how it will eventually be admired. I suppose that’s a result of creating art for oneself rather than for some other purpose — such as making oneself rich and/or famous (which are totally valid and, perhaps, far more logical aspirations).
Your work plays with dialectical reflections on hidden/visible, harmony/disharmony, complementary/not so much, reverence/irreverence. I am curious how you see contradiction as a necessary discourse in what you make and if you think it is important in images or art in general.
Dichotomies are always teaching tools, aren’t they? Parents will teach their children the differences between right and wrong, good and evil, clean and dirty, and so on. Of course the child will learn that the world is anything but black and white. For example, sometimes you have to be “evil” in the eyes of some to do what you, with every fiber of your being, perceive to be “good”.
One's perception of what is “right” will not be the same as someone else’s. Color disharmony to one can be perceived, as something quite harmonious to another. Slapping a hot pink circle of paint amid a Flemish landscape scene — where it doesn’t really belong, and where it obscures both the literal view of the fake, painted landscape as well as the Flemish artist’s artistic vision for an idealized scene — can be perceived as good by some, and egregious by others. That hot pink circle, placed in such an awkward place, causes us to consider a host of established dichotomies (good/bad, harmony/disharmony, etc.) that grate in a world filled mostly with shades of gray — it's all very subjective, isn't it?
I think so. This assumes that we all have to agree that the hot pink circle is out of place.
Or not out of place at all — in other words, totally at home.
Well, the flip side of this is the assumption that there is a place for that hot pink circle, a place for matter out of place.
Ah, yes. I believe that’s it.
If that hot pink circle was in a color from the landscape, it would lose its punch, resulting in emphasis on defiling the original, rather than creating an ongoing dialogue.
It’s visible punch, perhaps, but not necessarily its purpose. I think it could still work as a totally different color. I’m not so sure the color has to be hot pink for it to work; a color from the landscape might work somehow, providing anti-contrast.
How do you choose your colors, for the injections, like the hot pink circle, or in the material orbs imposed upon the photographic prints from Portrait Collage?
A lot of it has to do with aesthetics — balance, composition, compliment, contrast, etc. An analogous or monochromatic color palette could sometimes be the answer. It’s important for me not to necessarily rely on a formula — as in, “only outrageous” or “only highly contrastive” colors work.
I described my process very much like a performance, and it is. A million synapses fire in my brain as I engage with an object or image, and I can’t be too sure what the resulting color story will be. Once I’ve finished, I know whether or not the colors and forms work well or not. It doesn’t always work out, that’s for sure.
I see it as dialogue, in that you either insert the colors that aren’t there in the landscape or portrait (their absence reconstituted), or you bring the colors that are there even more to the surface…and it seems like the colors you often inject, or materials (glitter, for one) are modern, so the conversation then becomes grounded in the modern “now”.
I agree completely. Most of what I do involves blending essentially minimalist aesthetic ideas with motifs from art history (in the form of the images and objects I appropriate). In that way, there certainly is a clash of the “here and now” with the “then”.
What do you think the role of images will be in the coming generation of Artists and Thinkers who will be completely doused in the techno-digital culture we are constructing, one in which authenticity and authority have been further complicated (for better or worse). Can we return to authenticity, to the aura, after so much subversion?
I think subversion in postmodernism will provide a more lucid approach to understanding images in the future. People will look at every image and begin to question not what the images show, but how those images are being used, to what ends, and by whom. Artist Richard Prince showed us the lie of the Marlboro Man by subverting the cigarette advertisements and causing us to consider them more critically — they’re nothing more than a fantasy image meant to provoke us to literally buy into that fantasy.
Subversion is meant to reveal hidden codes that aren’t on the surface. In the future, I think people will be educated about the power of images to such a point that they no longer need to subvert them — they will naturally be critical and curious about what they’re shown. I don’t think I would call that “authenticity”, although being aware of the power of visual codes would certainly seem to have an “authentic” ring to it — perhaps “informed” is a better word and philosophy. I don’t believe there is some universal “authenticity” or “truth” that art, or anything else for that matter, is leading us toward. I don’t think objective truths about culture really exist. Who’s to say what is “true” and “authentic” anyway? No, there’s no black/white, authentic/inauthentic way for us to exist. There is simply critical awareness and questioning of the inherent subjectivities of human output.