Art + Culture Diaries: Jaret Vadera

At first glance, 2D technological intangibility is what appears to be captured in the latest work of, Yale University M.F.A. candidate, Jaret Vadera.  A pixelated abstraction that the viewer can identify with via the technological zeitegist of the moment.  Or perhaps an alternate new media rendering of a timeless amoeba-like embryonic form suggesting the infiniteness of birth/creation.

(Image: Jaret Vadera, untitled, 2008, digital print from ink on mylar paintings merged with digital video stills.)

Vadera’s backlit digital prints comprised of ink on mylar paintings merged with digital video stills (above and below) represent the artist’s exploration of, “…the space where biology, technology and fiction intersect and how we ‘make sense’ of fragmented or ambiguous data.”  The works 2D form captures a moment in psycho-physical organization that highlights the process of meaning/value creation in the mind of technology, the mind of the individual and thus, the mind of the collective. The implied stoppage of time that reverberates from Vadera’s images causes a physical energetic sensation while viewing the work.  The question of how the process of data sense-making happens then moves from abstraction into the real world as the viewer becomes aware of his/her own subjective power in making reality. At this point, the viewer takes hold of movement and becomes a collaborator in the creative process through the imagination of where the image might complete itself beyond abstraction.

(Image: Jaret Vadera, untitled, 2008, digital print from ink on mylar paintings merged with digital video stills.)

In the artist’s digital images of screen scaptures of glitches in Skype conversations (below) the subjectivity of the human experience is highlighted even more.  The pixelated feel of the work creates a unique juxtaposition between human feeling and technological form. Which in turn, isolates the human experience at a higher octave stimulating deeper inquiry into the agency of “how”.  Vadera’s mission of inquiry, “…to draw parallels between neuronal/biological systems of processing information and technological ones…” uses Skype as a point of entry, the artist’s hand as a point of departure and the viewer as a point of completion.  Thereby re-imagining the cycle of re-birth, life and death for a technological age.

(Image: Jaret Vadera, untitled, 2008, digital print from Skype digital captures.)

Contact Jaret Vadera.