Artwork
Illustration
#digital
#portraits
All photos © Sam Rodriguez, shared with permission
San Jose-based artist Sam Rodriguez would possibly liken an summary leaf sprouting from a younger lady’s garment or a Pac-Man-esque rendering floating close to a topic’s face to scenic parts. His portraits, which he’s been referring to as “cultural landscapes” for the previous few years, are topographies of identification that contain changing bushes, rivers, and horizons with social markers. “It’s attention-grabbing to see the limitless variants that every particular person carries after we unpack who they’re,” he shares with Colossal.
Knowledgeable by the analog strategies that have been the inspiration of his early observe, Rodriguez has been working digitally since 2018, rendering portraits rife with symbols. He references an abundance of layers evocative of a visible modifying program however incorporates every component as if a function of an unseen augmented actuality app. Typically, he deconstructs a nation’s or group’s flag and recontextualizes its colour palette, whereas others, he superimposes crops, minimal emblems, and bits of typography into densely constructed motifs. His works depend upon discovery, he shares, explaining additional:
Throughout the course of, you take in, pattern, and cook dinner visible components and afterwards you might be left as an viewers member questioning what it’s that you just’ve simply made. In that regard, I really feel that every piece (outdoors of commissions) is a type of style check… This strategy might be a byproduct of our time interval the place digital and bodily co-exist so seamlessly. It needs to be famous that I’m mimicking what so many musicians have finished because the 80s, particularly in hip-hop with sampling for beats.
At present, Rodriguez is at work on a ebook about how prosthetics and synthetic intelligence require rebalancing the connection between humanity and know-how. You possibly can observe information on its launch on his Instagram, and head to his store so as to add one in all his prints to your assortment.
#digital
#portraits
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