Learing to walk with Color

On 1st of February 2013, early in the morning in Weissensee Berlin, I fell 5 meters out of a window on which caused my right foot breaking and a hairline fracture in my pelvis. I was very lucky and was able to be kept in in good spirits by visits from friends during the time I was in the hospital. I was in two different hospitals for the time of one month and in this time I kept journals, read all of Tristram Shandy and Derek Jarman's Chroma. Watched many films and filled four sketchbooks. I started a new series of works on paper which I often gave to friends who visited me and I continued this series with acrylic paint, ink and collage after I got out of the hospital in the beginning of March.

At the begining of March I moved into a new flat (which has a great view of Berlin) in Weissensee after being released from the 2nd hospital. Now these pieces I selected and posted below are my personal favorites of the group of about 40 works that where painted mostly in the month of March. These works have been given away to to friends who visited me earlier when I was in the hospital or to friends who visited me in the new flat when I was not so mobile still. Also some works where sent off to friends who wrote me get well letters in the mail.

The works represent the time between my accident and my road to recovery and show my re-exploration into abstract painting. I feel the works of Philip Guston and Keith Haring unintentionally inspired the work a bit. The works of Philip Guston left a huge impression on me ever since I saw a retrospective of his work at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2003. Keith Haring was an artist I liked a lot as a kid growing up in the Leigh Valley in Pennsylvania. Since Haring was from Kutztown Pennsylvania there was a bit of Eastern Pennsylvania pride, (Kutztown is about 20 miles away from Allentown and Bethlehem area where I lived till the age of 13). Later as a teenager in Chicago I did lots of graffiti art in the streets of Chicago with friends, which I believe still to this day also inspires my abstract work. This again had a parallel to Keith Haring's work since he was experimenting and inspired by graffiti art in New York in the 1980's.

Overall these new works may just be layered color on paper but they became a bridging point between the older work I was doing and a new aesthetic approach in my artwork, as well as mapping a months time of recovery where I was slowly learning to walk again.

Sub- #5655 (Weissensee), acrylic on paper

Sub- #5651 (Weissensee), acrylic on paper

Sub- #5656 (Weissensee), acrylic on paper

Sub- #5658 (Weissensee), acrylic on paper

Sub- #5659 (Weissensee), acrylic on paper

Sub- #5660 (Weissensee), acrylic on paper

Sub- #5661 (Weissensee), acrylic on paper

Sub- #5662 (Weissensee), acrylic on paper

Sub- #5663 (Weissensee), acrylic on paper

Sub- #5665 (Weissensee), acrylic on paper

Sub- #5664 (Weissensee), acrylic on paper

Sub- #5714 (Weissensee), acrylic on bristol paper

Sub- #5716 (Weissensee), acrylic on bristol paper

Sub- #5668 (Weissensee), acrylic on bristol paper

Sub- #5652 (Weissensee), acrylic on bristol paper

Sub- #5666 (Weissensee), acrylic on paper

Sub- #5667 (Weissensee), acrylic on paper

Sub- #5657 (Weissensee), acrylic on paper

Artist Statement 2012

S.O.S. (Raft of the Medusa), acrylic on canvas, 240 x 180 cm, 2012

People are conditioned by social systems to define reality in ways that support the hegemony of the wealthy. The sub-real recognizes what is already there, removing the veil that hides decay and corruption. As a sub-realist I consider the under-workings of society: cities and civilization, tunnels and the criminal underworld, substructures and decay, alchemic currents, hidden histories and social political truths. I intervene by transforming what society discards into a re-presentation of sights and sounds. My commitment to the world affirms our interconnectedness. I question what is visible through addressing ideas in the spaces between and beyond representation. My approach is to tear apart the fabric of image and sound and reassemble them in a transitory collage.
          
My art incorporates the idea that deconstruction reflects our compulsion to open a text (in any form) to myriad meanings and interpretations. This aspect of my expression also builds on three orders (imaginary, symbolic, real) in a way that causes layering in my work. The current form of thinking in the contemporary art world focuses on postmodernity. Postmodernity (and modernity) is a dialogue between the dominant elite. I seek to create a discussion beyond this limited discussion toward metamodernity, an idea that embraces the common people on the fringes of society. The “weapons of mass-distraction” are everywhere trying dominate us and our struggle is to break these chains that weigh us down and keep us traveling on our paths to the beyond.

Flickering Moments in Time -Part II

So these flickering moments have become like a visual diary or journal of moments from film & documentary that I have seen over a span of time. It keeps records of only a small handful of many images I have seen from what I have watched.

Some films & documentaries I watch in the whole with no other activity (I especially do this with my favorite things and masterpieces as well as non English speaking films). Often I also work on artwork while I watch these things. Sometimes I carve a woodcut block, sew canvas together, catch up on my postal art or even paint. I often have to be occupied by many things at once to allow a flow of many ideas and inspiration to filter out.

Sometimes these random still I take will work themselves into a work or piece that I am working on or sometimes it becomes a focal point for another idea.

-David Stanley Aponte 16.9.2012, Berlin Germany