In the realm of the post-photographic, the translations of desire for the virtual exist in the processing of images. And in the age of the internet and the ever pervasive culture of self-awareness in the digital realm, how much becomes an actual physical representation or is it all relegated to the persistent desirability of the internet presentation?
In these digital performances operating on the materiality of the virtual, an internet-based lifestyle derived from materials from mobile phones and computers, it questions how such is a pornographic entity in its own right. Something is overwhelming there and something is not there that surpasses void. Do we operate as an alterity that doesn’t speak of it directly as an alterity induced by this digital realm? In our excessive processes pursued to create an imagery of seductive and compelling images, do we actually still work on materializing desire or just sublimating desire into an empty category?
Extravagant Singularities (2017) Photography, Digital Performance
Gian Cruz (b. 1987, Manila, Philippines), an emerging artist whose artistic practice is heavily rooted in photography. His artistic practice is a dynamic integration of his institutional work and his background in art theory and criticism.
Cruz’s work is central to the volatility of the image in contemporary culture and the multiple discourses that come along it. He often extends his photographic work towards a more complex multidisciplinary orientation integrating performance, translation, history, literature, ecology, cinema and several other fields and contexts that find itself fitting to engage with his current preoccupations as an artist.