The process of creating the work was the most exciting.
First, I mixed the oil colours on the palette. Then I photographed these strokes and transferred them to Photoshop. After that, there was a long process of applying and combining these strokes into an Instagram mask.
The final result was an oil painting mask for the viewer.
The mask or filter that we use on social networks to change our appearance. This mask does not exist without a person. It only appears on the face.
Try it here on your smartphone: https://www.instagram.com/wittemannmarina/?hl=ru - mask effects
It is something that is between us, and the viewer. It is, after all, a mirror in which we are changing according to our desires. It is a virtual window through which one the artwork will be seen by many people at different places and different time. Each time it will be new artwork, as the person who wears it is likely a new person.
This is the pattern that will be repeated.
The viewer will record a small video - a story, where there will be a beginning and an end. It is a time passage. It is a fragment of a person's life where the viewer becoming a co-creator of the artwork.
The discussion opens between the recorded video and the live mirroring, where the viewer tries the mask and checking himself. Video is our past that is gone and never comes back in real life but can come back as virtual memory. Life try of the mask is an alive experience for everyone to see yourself in another role: with white hairs; or as a part of the art piece.
I am curious whether the viewer will be able to define this as artwork and not a filter for social networks?
It can be helped, firstly, by the complex process of creating this work using pictorial materials. Secondly, I am an artist, not a web designer or blogger, which speaks of other tasks of creating a mask.
There are a lot of questions rises on such a work:
Is it a viewer who performs, or he/she already becomes an actor or artist?
Is it a three-dimensional moving sculpture in the virtual world or a live painted person?
Artist I looked at while working on this piece.
Boo Ritson uses the real body as a canvas, creates a narrative and shot photographs of the models.
Matthew Stone photographs paint strokes on glass and then uses them to build bodies using software. When printed, they inhabit “a shared world,” a statement says, “defined by a grey infinity floor, proliferating petals of paint and a raw linen void as backdrop.” (Smith, 2018)
Matthew Stone [Painting] At: https://hifructose.com/2018/07/12/matthew-stones-latest-medium-bending-paintings/ (Accessed on 05.06.19)
Stone developed and introduced a new technique of "creating" a picture which is a characteristic for our modern time. (Quoted from my Drawing 1 course research)
Molly Soda a girl from America who presented online reality “on the wall”. She lives her life makes fun of herself and openly shares all information with the public. (Quoted from my Drawing 1 course research)
Molly Soda – Don’t Be So Sensitive, 2016. C-Type print on aluminium 55.2 x 31 cm (21 3/4 x 12 1/4 in); Unique Courtesy: The Artist & Annka Kultys Gallery At: https://www.widewalls.ch/molly-soda-interview/ (Accessed on 23.08.19)
Amalia Ulman presented a performance on Instagram which represented in her book "Excellences & Perfections". The artist plays the role of a young girl building a career on the Internet and taking various desperate steps for this. Self-identity in the online world is the main attention of the artist. It's no secret that the social space brings depression and disappointment to regular users, since comparing our lives with the life of Instagram stars, we still lacking several million Euros for a picture on a yacht with a glass of Crystal. (Quoted from my Drawing 1 course research)
“Excellencies & Perfections #10” (2018) Image Courtesy ©Amalia Ulman & Arcadia Missa, London. At: https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/39375/1/amalia-ulman-2014-instagram-hoax-predicted-the-way-we-use-social-media (Accessed on 27.08.19)
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