No More Masters, No More Memes; a slogan of pursuit.
These selected works present both pivotal developmental steps in, and the summation of, artist Joshua Blue’s five-year commitment to explore this series. Employing techniques from Abstract Expressionism, Post-Painterly Abstraction, and Pop Art; Blue’s work proposes to leave the viewer a visual record of action. It seeks first to draw the audience into a state of inquisitiveness, casting a web of gestural line over bright colors- wrapping it all neatly in hard edged planes. It then attempts to challenge the viewers perceptions of foreground and background- which layer came first and which came last. In some cases, leaving behind found objects meant to carry that curiosity out of the painting and into life.
The devices deployed throughout the work intend to reflect the multitude of layers through which we view our everyday lives. The multiple ways we are being unintentionally or willfully distracted by the creations of the culture industry that keep us binge watching, endless feeds that keep us scrolling, profit-based news that implores us to stay tuned and the properly advertised cocktails that take off the edge. The questions impressed on the viewer of the painting are the same questions the artist seeks to have his audience ask themselves about their own existence. What is the foreground and what is the background? What is the distraction and what is it distracting me from?
No more masters, no more memes, I will not touch that screen.