Claudio's Thesis - CONCEPTS

a way to elaborate and articulate what I am making, and why - invited to do so during JAN assessment

. attempts at defining what I'm making - 1 sentence/short paragraph each day (?) - Here I try to write down, in simple sentences, what I am interested in, as an artist. I try to define the field in which i am moving. As I often struggle to clearly understand and therefore explain what I'm interested in, what and why I make, I will commit to an exercise of repeatedly writing short paragraphs trying to pinpoint the core concerns of what I make.

Move here the "I'M INTERESTED IN" part that is now in INTRO?

(WHAT) I'M INTERESTED IN (WHAT)

Through making BLIND SPOTS, LIGHT TRICKS/TRACES, FLASHES AND FAILURES,

I’m interested in exploring the fundamental elements and conditions of vision, its limits and the notion of blindness in relation to images and image-making.

I’m interested in light and its double potential to make things visible and to make blind. Its absence and presence, its double effects on images and vision. To drown in light, or to emerge from it. To appear and conceal. To make the world exist, or vanish.

I'm interested in the fine line between visibility and invisibility, between transparency and opacity.

I'm interested in those liminal moments when nothing (or everything) is seen as something, or when something that can't be seen becomes nothing. Things becoming nothing, something, everything in and through light, in and trough images.

I'm interested in exploring the liminal states between seeing something, everything, nothing.

I'm interested in the paradoxical link between nihilism and the sublime.

I'm interested in explore the tension between pure abstraction and mere materiality of images, between representation of the world and presentation of the medium, between seeing everything and not seeing anything.

I’m interested in images and screens as supports for such paradoxical coexistence of showing and hiding.

I'm interested in the concept of blind spot. Ocular blind spots in retinal structures; blind(ing) elements in the "structure" of images (over/under exposures, out-of-focus, flickering ...); images and screens as blind objects; also, blind spots in perception of the world.

I'm interested in exploring light as a flash. The flash of light as a concept, an image, and a physical phenomenon. The flash as the basic unit of light; as a (im)pulse for/on vision. As a singular, sudden event of extreme light that paradoxically reveals and blinds. As a device for apparition and concealment, of existence and negation. As a metaphor and image for both nihilism and the sublime. Also, the flash as the fundament of every experience of moving images, and of digital screens too.

I'm interested in the failure of images. The paradox of making fail-ed/-ing images as part of my image-making practice as a visual artist. I'm interested in exploring and working on events of failure of images. Failed images as images that question and subvert their expected representative value. Images that represents nothing-ness, that show themselves as images, that are blind and that blind the viewer, both physically and conceptually.

I'm interested in the repetition and variation, in the redundancy, of images.

I'm interested in the durational experience/effect of watching.