astronauts coming home
Pardon (IG here) is a creative studio specializing in artistic and entrepreneurial development. Their ethos and their emphasis is to foster both creativity and community. You may not be familiar with Pardon, but if you're subscribed to Revue Colle then you've already experienced a small taste of Pardon's offerings.
Towards the end of last year I had the tremendous honor of receiving a commission from Pardon to create a series of collages for their collection. I'm excited to share that series and the work statement for them below. I owe my utmost gratitude to Mario Zoots (IG here) and Nicholas Pardon (IG here) for the opportunity.
This project is a love letter and a reality check. A scrap book from the future. An existential crisis in a time capsule. A sense of looking back and forward simultaneously. Holding longing and acceptance within a tandem embrace.
Every thing changes, and the way it changes, changes us too. They say you can never go home again, and in a sense it's true, because we're not the same people and home doesn't mean what it used to.
Through the use of printed AI images, vintage magazines, comic book fragments, and digitally created collage papers made analog again, this project seeks to explore the uneasy tension between where we come from, where we are, where we belong, and where we might be going.
Each piece layers fragments of the familiar reframed through the uncanny lens of machine interpretation, to reflect upon the nearness and farness of belonging and estrangement.
Like an astronaut viewing Earth from outer space and coming back again. Feeling at once more human and more alien. More embraced and more distant. It is an exploration of wonder, fragility, otherness, and resilience.
P.S. ICAD Day 220 - 222 - The collages below, and many others, are available for purchase here
I like this point, Duane: "Like an astronaut viewing Earth from outer space and coming back again. Feeling at once more human and more alien."
I spent a decade outside of Canada living in Korea and the reverse culture shock felt like this in a way. So much had changed while my memories of the place had faded and perhaps been idealized and inaccurate. Hard to explain but nevertheless, an awesome experience.
I like that collage titled: "thwarted with their plans of happiness and folly." Interesting to have the reflection in the visor of the astronaut.
I dream of getting rich and having a giant room covered in your collages.