In our Connkt interview series, we interviewed a Connekt American artist whose art is a reflection of her emotions, a Connekt Danish artist whose art is a mean to spread healing energy, a Connekt Italian artist who uses art as a tool to send out strong messages and evoke actions and today I will be interviewing a Connekt artist from Israel to whom art is philosophy.
J. D. Doria, is an interdisciplinary Connekt artist, based in Tel Aviv, Israel. His work explores through ‘matter’ the questions he deems fundamental in a human becoming, and matures at the intersections between art and technology, and between art and science. His background in cinema allows him to capture unexpected dynamic qualities in his works, which stem out from painting, and evolve through technology and photography into generative art. Putting my observation aside, here is how Doria describes his art:
What would happen if one looks at nature, imagination and matter as a continuum? Where the one is endlessly spilling into the other? My work, originally rooted in painting, interprets such a continuum of potential openness and attempts to achieve it by the attentive usages of bridges, the bridges to which I refer as technologies.
While he mentioned nothing about having a philosophical approach towards art, I couldn’t help but to pick up on this notation by looking not so hard in between the lines.
When I first looked at Doria’s work, I felt he’s attempting to emphasize on the abstract natural beauty of microscopic life, the life of the human cells that is not that far from the macroscopic life, the world of galaxies.
In his interview however, he surprised me with a different explanation of his artwork and how his art symbolizes ‘constant change’ and to him beauty is a “curation-of-becoming”. Bellow is the interview with Connekt 2014 artist J.D. Doria:
Interview with Connekt Isreali Artist Doria JD
What made you shift from Cinema to interdisciplinary art?
Doria instead answered to his self-asked question:
How has your background in Cinema impacted your art?
Cinema is my background and the initial corridor I took into art, and it has definitely influenced the way I understand art, aesthetics and the scope of being an artist.
Technology is a critical factor in enabling the emergence of Cinema, and the final product of it is always the outcome of an ensemble of masters working together.
The interesting element is that the artistic output is grown through stations that blur the times of the process: the script, for instance, is recreated during shooting and re-framed during editing. I believe that this attitude towards the artistic process is visible in my current work.
The use of technology, the collaborative work and the succession of multiple stations of making, are an integral aspect of the way I create.
What makes your art unique?
I introduced technology into the traditional process of painting. I have used various technologies: 3D scanner, digital photography and computer software. I also changed the medium upon which I work, moving from big canvases to small paper, and lately migrating from the 2D surfaces of traditional painting to the 3D depth and fluidity of Petri dish cultures captured on still camera.
The Petri dish, in its symbolic power, reflects in my mind the growing powers of experimentation that characterize the beginning of the current century. As humans our civilization may soon be able to play with our inner codes, to reprogram the inner folds of ourselves. It is a dramatic discontinuity with previous history and it is happening extremely fast.
They say we are what we experience. If you had to name one single experience that had a major influence on your art, what would that be?
It is what I call the ‘edge of familiarity’. If being familiar with something (one self or another) means that it becomes a triviality then the ‘edge of familiarity’ is the experience that every moment is pregnant with becoming. This ongoing experience in conjunction with art means both the migration from repetition and the insistence upon the fresh and interesting. What is the biggest challenge of being an artist? In one sentence I think that the highest challenge is to be relevant to the current culture and people so that it allows the expansion of that culture.
If you have to share one tip with upcoming artists, what would that be?
Perhaps the boldest difference that has emerged along the years of practice lies in the understanding that the making of art needs to be dressed with a proper context and that the context needs to be relevant (a currency) to the current phase of the culture, and yet, the work of art should corresponds with timeless features. And in one sentence: if that which you do does not takes you farther in terms of being and becoming, then it is not worth doing or presenting.
What is art?
Making of art lies in the communication between the morphology of eternity and the morphology of temporalities. So that, the actual ‘making’ is itself a process of morph-genesis, composing these morphologies into new and hopefully relevant form.
If you are at Rome between Dec 18 to Dec 23 and wish to J.D. Doria’s exhibiting artworks , get your ticket at visit.connektexpo.com or contact Doria with your request for a complimentary private invitation to Dec 19 private viewing and media day.
