End?
Oskar B.
-
The piece "End?" was photographed on a Canon DSLR camera, utilizing a UV Filter as a makeshift pink gel. I used negative space to make the central element of the photo, a street sign showing the word "END" and several stray spray paint marks, stand out. My intention with this work was to show the beauty of everyday urban environments, particularly those explicitly considered ugly. Graffiti is largely viewed as vandalism and a mar on neat, clean neighborhoods, but even so, its artistic merit is recognized by part of the public when featured as a cohesive artwork. However, leftover paint marks such as the ones on this sign are just "trashy." "End?" challenges this perception by forcing the audience to focus on this street sign, paint marks and all, and realize how the grungy chaos and explicit lack of cohesiveness creates artwork, and even more than that, a question: the end of what? A dark dash of black paint turns the sign’s warning of a terminating road to an unfinished sentence, “END-”, leaving the audience to fill in the blanks. Was this “vandalism” intentional? Was it previously part of a larger artwork? What happened to it? What will happen to this artwork in the future? Will someone else come along with a can of spray paint and transform it again? How might “End?” itself evolve from its current state? “End?” challenges the forms art takes and questions what the end of an artwork’s life means – or if they ever do.
-
To me, creativity is the way I express myself and share my philosophy/identity with the world. My creativity manifests most often by blending different artistic mediums - audio, writing, film, and others - to create a diverse experience audiences can approach from multiple angles.
