Bob Powell: Connections
Artist(s):
Collaborators:
- Christopher H. Perry
-
- Hampshire College
- Greg Keith
- Kristy Nielson
Title:
- Connections
Exhibition:
Medium:
- Mounted Iris Prints, video monitors, and VCRs
Size:
- 10 x 10 inches
Category:
Artist Statement:
Connections is a installation piece consisting of 2 large mounted frames and 1 back projection, and 9 VCRs and ntsc monitors.
The piece is called Connections because it focuses on those moments when we connect to other human beings in our day to day lives.
Through out man’s history violence, crime, war and disasters have always occurred. These elements are endemic to the human condition. Civilizations rise and fall, and belief systems come and go, but humanity remains roughly the same.
However, out of this environment of chaos, often in the very moments of its greatest turmoil, people are continually able bring forth beauty, understanding and compassion for one another.
It is the very process of recognizing the humanity of another individual, and forming a connection with them, that allows us to survive give a sense of order to an otherwise unordered universe.
To connect to our fellow human beings is to be empathetic, humane and to try to and understand them. By doing so also enables us to recognize the humanity in ourselves as well.
This piece illustrates these moments of connecting by showing images of couples, mothers and children, and friends coming together superimposed against a backdrop of archetypes and scenes of violence that represent the darker, destructive, and chaotic sides of of life itself.
If I could have the viewer come away with only 1 impression, it would be that to make a connection with someone is to try and understand who they really are. To understand who someone is, is to recognize the basic humanity of each individual. That moment of recognition leads us to understand that every individual has an intrinsic value as basic as their humanity, a value equal to our own.
