Patrick Marasso

<Back to Artists	Patrick Marasso Please click on the images to see info and enlargements.

ARTIST STATEMENT My most recent paintings are a result of my ongoing search for new visual catalysts. I explored eBay images of vintage dolls and action figures. But instead of seeing these objects as props, I became interested in the images themselves. I wanted to know what would happen if I were to paint these images and take them out of their cyber-auction format. The seller-arranged composition of the eBay image freed me from the tasks of composing and of creating a narrative. I liked the unsophisticated honesty of the image. I liked the dual effect of the nostalgia for the toy, and the memory of the sexually charged scenarios of my childhood created through these toys (male-female adult relationships, homosexuality and other taboo sexual situations). The voyeuristic nature of these images -- the nudity, the crime-scene lighting and composition, the childhood memories of improvised family intimacy – imbue the images with sexual, psychological, and sociological overtones. By painting the eBay image and displaying the painting outside of the cyber-auction format, could I push the perversity to a different level? And if I could, could I achieve what Freud describes in discussing the unheimlich or uncanny? For Freud, the uncanny is not just the grotesque or unusual; the uncanny may also be found in a new apprehension of everyday phenomena and objects.