We all look at ourselves in the mirror each day to “get ready” to visually present ourselves to the community that we live, work, and breath in. We brush our teeth and wash up so we do not smell when we interact with others. All day long we make adjustments to our realities to “fit into” our surrounding environments.
What is reality? The smelling un-groomed half asleep person? The policeman who stands up in court testifying? The operator of an illegal shell game on the street in New York? Reality is what our brain perceives it to be.
Artists should have the freedom to make adjustments to images to gain the reality that they are striving toward. It is not unethical to alter original content even if it changes the meaning of the original content. Sometimes these changes in meaning give the art more depth. Especially if the viewer is familiar with the original piece. What would be unethical is if and artist chooses to manipulate content without recognition of the source material, the original.
The artist, Ken Gonzales-Day, explores reality in his works. An interview on Gonzales-Day in the LA times from Feb 13, 2011 by Holly Myers, Ken explains why he altered pictures of persons who were victims of lynching to protect them, to not make them a victim once again. He chose to display the pictures of the victims with different faces to expose the injustice of the victims.
He does the same in his works, The Bone Grass Boy: The Secret Banks of the Conejos River and Untitled #36, he exposes the truth. When the viewer looks at the picture Untitled #36 it is obvious that it has been tampered with. The audience immediately realizes that they need to keep their guard up.
Gonzales-Day plays with the reality of the history portrayed. He digitally alters the image to poke fun at the historical “facts”. He even compares these works to Duchamp’s, Fountain claiming that the story was “nevermade” playing on Duchamp’s “readymades” collection. Historic reality is only as objective as the point of view of its story teller. It might be the reality of the storyteller but not to all who lived that history. He exposes the smelling un-groomed person half-awake person and maybe adds his face to them.
NOTES:
Duchamp’s, “Fountain” – http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/25853
Ken Gonzales-Day, “The Bone Grass Boy: The Secret Banks of the Conejos River” – http://e-flux.com/aup/project/ken-gonzales-day-bone-grass-boy-the-secret-banks-of-the-conejos-river-1995-2000/
In the Studio: Ken Gonzales-Day
LA times 2/13/2011 by Holly Myers – http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/13/entertainment/la-ca-gonzales-day-20110213/2
Digital Art, by Christiane Paul, pgs. 36-37
Ken Gonzales-Day, projects – http://www.kengonzalesday.com/projects/index.htm
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