Ruben Nieto

Guanajuato, Mexico

5/15/09 to 5/15/10

Comic Abstractions

My current work is based on the appropriation and mediation of popular imagery. Our visual references today are primarily secondhand because we are saturated by mass media. I take, borrow, and appropriate what interests me visually, recycling motifs and images. I develop a new frame of reference from already art-rendered images like Comic books, removing them form their acquired location. I grew up reading these books, and today those memories play an important role as part of my creative process. Similar to Richard Prince and the "Pictures Generation" my images are constructed from mass media, but I alter and modify them using a contemporary reproducible medium such as the computer.

My work takes this one step further by using computer software to transform and alter the structure of Comic imagery; morphing, simplifying and reducing them. I decompose the narrative structure and recontextualize the imagery as a conglomeration of seemingly unrelated images. This makes the relationship between the integrated figures sometimes unclear, adding a sense of intrigue and creating its own narrative.

As a conceptual and directorial strategy that aloud me to concentrate on the creation of comic related imagery, and inspired by Koons and the Warholian tradition of working with assistants, the final images are then partially translated by a highly skilled staff who help me bring the digital file back into an old fashioned medium. They replicate exactly the forms, shapes, and hues under my direction using the traditional technique of oil on canvas. At the final stage I finish the canvas myself. My choice of formal elements is personal and remains individual. Forms and shapes coincide and drift on planes of varying depth, resulting in Comic abstractions with a Contemporary "pop" look. All graphic information is reorganized and directed into a cohesive and constant experience, creating an abstraction that serves as an illusion, placing the viewer into his/her own reality without removing the art.

Ruben Nieto.

Artist's website: http://www.rubenietocomics.blogspot.com/

Ruben Neito, WRUNCH!