Ray Caesar has just finished a show of his new work at the Berman Gallery in LA. Ray describes his process:
"My work is entirely digital, from its creation to its method of printing. I create models in a three dimensional modeling software and cover these models with painted and manipulated photographic textures that wrap around them like a map on a globe.
Each model is then set up with a invisible skeleton that allows me to pose and position the figure in its three dimensional environment. Digital lights and cameras are added with shadows and reflections simulating that of a real world." Ray Caesar website
Source: Cool Hunting
After viewing some of Ray's other paintings, I began to see a similarity in the way we create celebrities from a screen that simulates a real world. Unfortunately, our uber-celebrities have no redeeming talent other than being a manufactured celebrity.
Has our vision become so narrow that we can no longer conjure from the collective unconscious, mythological heroes to psychologically and spiritually empower us to become more as human beings, imparting us with the tools to realize - humility, compassion and love, instead of becoming better consumers?
Ray's digital paintings are eerie reminders of the detritaus of decadence and self-indulgence in our society.
You know Paris:
And Lindsay:
And always Britney:
Perhaps, we shouldn't look to myths, they may be too complex, but rather the simplicity of a fairytale, in this case, Hans Christian Anderson's, "The Girl Who Trod On A Loaf" Click for Fairytale
"She was a poor child, but proud and arrogant, and people said she had a bad disposition. When but a very little child, she found pleasure in catching flies, to pull off their wings and make creeping insects of them. And she used to stick May bugs and beetles on a pin, then put a green leaf or piece of paper close to their feet, so that the poor animals clung to it, and turned and twisted as they tried to get off the pin."
And look what happened to that poor girl:
Illustration: Arthur Szyk website
But what's a culture to do when it becomes impotent and barren and can no longer create heroes of substance?
You can always pick up your cell phone and call your higher power.
Lao Tze
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