James Goins

UNITY AND ENTROPY

Artist Statement:

A conundrum of visual perception is that surface is not the totality, but one of several that combine to manifest meaning. Perception is pliable. In my work I am manipulating perception to shape reality. There is a unity that under girds everything. My intention is to illuminate this truth. I want to create revelatory images that serve as windows where we may see with an open mind.

Unity and Entropy is a series of images, which have been layered in an effort to transcend the ordinary grasp of conventional perception. Conventional knowledge abstracts events, experience, and existence into concepts and words. The ordinary act of seeing employs these abstractions. Though they are necessary for understanding our environment, they fall short of revealing what lies beneath the surface of our conventions. For me, only the layering of an image will allow for expression of my multi-tiered sense of reality.

This work serves equally as a symbol of the individual submerged and overwhelmed by the deterioration of contemporary life. The subjects are awash and inundated by the breakdown of the physical form in conjunction with its environment. Despite this, some images are able to convey a sense of hope and unity through their disintegration. I was compelled to explore imagery and techniques that would embody my sense of coexistent unity and entropy. I studied the subtle similarities between human skin and a variety of decaying surfaces. Both are subject to entropy; moreover, both are composed of the same fundamental elements. By fusing negatives I could convey simultaneous unity and entropy.

Unlike painting, photography has a limited ability to elicit a tactile response. Photography may document disintegration but is devoid of the mark making which can invest an art object with a sense of the personal and the temporal. I want to be present in my work. I use experimental processes like bleaching, toning, and manipulating the negative and print to leave evidence of my hand. My goal is to push beyond the momentary quality of many photographs. I want to combine in my work a sense of past and present, of the interdependent web of existence, and the constancy of flux.