Robert Hodge is one of the artists in ‘RITES’, Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, GA, USA
Until December 6, 2015.
Stand Your Ground, 2013.
About:
My work combines forms of painting, collage, and the digital in order to create a world in which time is void and is replaced by artistic lexicon. I mix Renaissance imagery, icons of present-day culture and aesthetics from Internet subculture in order to not only juxtapose the rival forces of historical and contemporary art and society, but also unite them.
Before The Limelight Stole Ya, 2014.
The Renaissance recycled ideas of beauty from antiquity and pioneered aspects of realism, depth and proportion; later becoming the foundation academies would build a notion of ‘the canon’ upon. All contemporary western art somehow references this, either actively conforming to or diverging from the past, and it is this relationship I endeavor to explore throughout my work.
The great electric show and dance, 2013.
Why you all in my grill, 2014.
I glitch images and create collages by overlaying and distorting well known paintings and sculptures from old masters such as Donatello & Michelangelo. Glitching, literally destroying the code of a digital image, creates colours and forms that I have very little control over. I then use these accidental combinations to inspire the aesthetic of my paintings and create a digital interpretation of the Renaissance. This hints at anachronism while concurrently disregarding the beauty that is associated with this period and mocking the chic aesthetic of a sector of the contemporary art world. In this way, my work occupies a space between the past and the present, playing with a plethora of sources from visual language in order to draw attention to the continuous nature of art itself; a forever evolving energy that is not, and cannot be reduced to, a linear timeline.