White on Black, 2008-2009
acrylic over digital photographic print
24" x 20"

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This work is part of my exhibition 'Our Short Eternity'. My artist statement follows:


The theme of the exhibit is technical rather than built on visually consistency. My goal is to bring together various pieces of work that speak to each other on an experimental plain; I, the artist, am experimenting with technique and resolving to introduce mediums to one another. Paint applied to photographs; digital collages of painted elements; printmaking versus painting versus paper mediums; digital graphic design applied using various methods; etc.

The title of the exhibit is more than an oxymoron. It represents the compact nature of life; we are, we exist, we become aware of our existence, we interpret our existence, and we die. The awareness of ourselves is bookended by our birth and our death. Our eternity is all-knowing but is only valid while we take breath. Our eternity is at once infinite in our minds and limited to our physical handicap.

My work speaks to this philosophical level in its very nature of being. Paintings represent a wet, tangible reality that forces an artist to engage physically with his or her ideologies; to conceive of, engage with, and execute a painting is a transformative activity unable to be realized without tangible and conceptual resources that must be sufficiently manipulated to gain a finished piece. Photography requires less physical engagement and manipulation of dynamic resources, but requires far more engagement with an artist's environment. Concepts are executed and constructed through the use of pre-existing structures; mechanical competency, and not the physical exertion of transformation of resources, is required to execute a photograph.

Other mediums carry their own philosophical DNA strands. When forced to collide, artistic mediums conduct a conversation that speaks to the very brain matter of art in its most general form, and consequently questions the fabric that binds idea with the means of visualizing that idea.

Besides the common thread of challenging one another, my works have independent occupations. Each work is built, like a metropolis of skyscrapers, on its own foundation, with different objectives living inside. In this respect I hope that each work speaks its own language (has its own story to tell), but through the universality of sight, is capable of communicating fully with every other piece.

Our Short Eternity, 2009
Chad Wys