Keith Graham Bond

A human life, in a sense, is a series of individual events bound together through time by the brain’s immense capacity to retain, archive, and express information. Every moment is captured by our five senses, analyzed, and subsequently rendered into reason.  The addition of each new experience, in turn, builds a greater collective understanding of reality.  It is through this method of archiving by which we survive and thrive in our physical environment.

 

Life, in all forms, comes with an expiration date. After an organism is swept away by time, artifacts representing that organism’s existence remain.  These artifacts leave clues about their authors, yet intrinsically leave many mysteries yet to be unveiled. “Future Viewer” is an homage to the digital artifacts that are produced today by the human race en mass.  These artifacts are a sliver of Man’s existence, and will remain insulated by the degradation of time, waiting patiently to be once again understood.  

Night lights

“Night Lights” is a visual exploration of a unique atmospheric prospective phenomenon created by points of light cutting through darkness across urban landscapes.  A simple series of lights at night gives the viewer a greater understanding of physical landscapes and a vivid perception of civilization’s effect on said landscapes.      

       Hierarchy formation is a phenomenon that has occurred throughout human history. Actions and symbolic notions direct the shape of specific hierarchical structures. These structures are ubiquitous in contemporary society; it would be near impossible to observe an individual unaffected by the physical, psychological, and sociological effects of some type of hierarchy.

Those who rise though hierarchies utilize knowledge, experience, and privilege to advance up the pyramid. To the un-initiated, these actions and symbols are akin to magical practices; they may know they have been tricked, yet they do not have the tools or experience to comprehend how the illusion works. Just as stage magicians cry "ABRACADABRA" while they execute the prestige of their well-practiced slight-of-hand, so too the consummate hierarchy-climbers perform their own "incantations" as they climb the socio-economic ladder.

One common symbol of authority used to express a higher position in a hierarchy is the arrangement of portraits on a wall in the lobbies and great halls of institutions and professional facilities. I have augmented the traditional function of the portrait-on-the-wall practice by redacting the faces and highlighting the austere fashion of each subject. These are principle aspects that the viewer will analyze when deciding the character of the subject in a portrait. By stripping and highlighting information, the preferred, groomed narrative of the portrait is replaced by the realization that no portrait will ever accurately represent the subject.

This is who people turn to when the world has been turned upside down. Some are ordinary people who have stood up to former powers and made it up the ladder - but some are not. How do we know who is who? Which portraits have made it here with morality and trust and which have made it here through deceit and trickery?

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