Crops, Motifs, and Cultural Symbols Are Superimposed onto Digital Portraits by Sam Rodriguez
Artwork
Illustration
#digital
#portraits
All photos © Sam Rodriguez, shared with permission
San Jose-based artist Sam Rodriguez would possibly liken an summary leaf sprouting from a younger girl’s garment or a Pac-Man-esque rendering floating close to a topic’s face to scenic components. His portraits, which he’s been referring to as “cultural landscapes” for the previous few years, are topographies of identification that contain changing timber, rivers, and horizons with social markers. “It’s attention-grabbing to see the limitless variants that every particular person carries once we unpack who they’re,” he shares with Colossal.
Knowledgeable by the analog strategies that had been the muse of his early follow, Rodriguez has been working digitally since 2018, rendering portraits rife with symbols. He references an abundance of layers evocative of a visible modifying program however incorporates every factor as if a characteristic of an unseen augmented actuality app. Generally, he deconstructs a nation’s or group’s flag and recontextualizes its shade palette, whereas others, he superimposes crops, minimal emblems, and bits of typography into densely constructed motifs. His works depend upon discovery, he shares, explaining additional:
Throughout the course of, you take in, pattern, and prepare dinner visible components and afterwards you might be left as an viewers member questioning what it’s that you just’ve simply made. In that regard, I really feel that every piece (outdoors of commissions) is a kind of style check… This strategy might be a byproduct of our time interval the place digital and bodily co-exist so seamlessly. It needs to be famous that I’m mimicking what so many musicians have finished because the 80s, particularly in hip-hop with sampling for beats.
At the moment, Rodriguez is at work on a e book about how prosthetics and synthetic intelligence require rebalancing the connection between humanity and expertise. You’ll be able to comply with information on its launch on his Instagram, and head to his store so as to add considered one of his prints to your assortment.
#digital
#portraits
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