ULTRA

by blunt, gregory

This thesis paper is meant to serve as a supporting document for a thesis exhibition that was held the University of Waterloo Art Gallery. The show consisted of paintings on Plexiglas and sculptural installations with fluorescent lights.

The aesthetic style of my paintings makes a strong reference to the visual vocabulary of computer software. More specifically, it mimics architectural computer vector graphics from the 1980s. There is a visual metaphor created in my paintings where it blueprint drawing has 'evolved' into computer vector graphics, ultimately though, nothing has changed. The images are still hand drafted with pencils and then hand painted. The lexicon of digital software is appropriated, but by transferring the images from the virtual space of the screen to a literal three-dimensional space, the meaning is discarded. They become generalized abstract signs that retain their connotations, but not their meaning and function. The work thus makes a simple point in its refusal to 'get digital. ' There is a fetishization of technology, yet simultaneously a refusal of it.

Other concerns that I deal with in my work and thesis paper, include notions of good and bad taste, kitsch and the Camp aesthetic, science-fiction, nostalgia, representations of the 'future,' Suprematist painting, Minimalism, Design, and the utopian ideals of Modernism.