DAVID CRISMON

ARTIST STATEMENT

I felt it was appropriate to use an 'old' process, such as painting, to address current processes or technologies. Systems, digital imaging, scans, photocopies and data glitches are a small part of larger strata of visual surveillance about ourselves and the world around us.

In the 21st century we are shaped by information. The ceaseless flow of data in and around our lives has become seamless with our perception it. This is especially apparent with respect to history. Technology renders history as something endlessly under construction. The past is subject to investigation, re–interpretation, splicing and editing. Consequently, various distortions and interferences of information occur whether intended or not.

By displacing images from the past into the present, I wish to accentuate those distortions and changes; reconstructing various historical works where some information has been duplicated, altered, or is missing altogether. These altered historical sources help show history being transformed into a kind of abstract data. Our attempts to construct a reliable understanding of the world form a constantly shifting composite; a tenuous, fragmented, image where neither the past nor the present exist without the interference of the other.