Anesthetized to the love of God

The work of Allan Smessaert. Rephotographed, Reimagined, and Rerealized

Rephotography

“Re-photography uses appropriation as its own focus: artists pull from the works of others and the worlds they depict to create their own work. Appropriation art became popular in the late 1970s. Other appropriation artists such as, Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler, Vikky Alexander, Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger and Mike Bidlo also became prominent in the East Village in the 1980s. This grouping of artists became known as the "Pictures Generation." All of these artists were greatly influenced by the work of John Baldessari and Robert Heinecken, both of whom have worked extensively with found or readymade print photography since the 1960s, Baldessari working mainly with Hollywood film stills and Heinecken mainly with magazine advertisements and print pornography. Both artists taught at UCLA and the California Institute for the Arts in Southern California throughout the 1970s, when many of these artists attended school there.”

courtesy: Wikipedia

Artist’s Statement

“My work here explores the relationship between Critical Theory and Life as performance. With influences as diverse as Caravaggio and Roy Lichtenstein, new insights are manufactured from both constructed and discovered narratives.

Ever since I was a young man I have been fascinated by the unrelenting divergence of the zeitgeist. What starts out as a vision soon becomes finessed into a tragedy of greed, leaving only a sense of decadence with only the possibility of a new reality.

As the shimmering phenomena become clarified through bounded and academic practice, the viewer is left only with a testament to the status of our condition.”

- Will

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