Break The Chains By Wilfredo Menendez
Medium: Digital Manipulation
Length: 36 Inches (91.44 cm) Width: 24 Inches (60.96 cm) Completed: September, 2015 Exhibition Text: This piece is meant to show how our imaginations are limited by society. The sky is darker at top and lighter closer to the person, this is meant to show how our minds have an extraordinary power. Also the person is made up of different colors and the shadows are made to look like sketches resembling pieces by Andy Warhol and the Pop Art movement. |
Process & Reflection: Above are my planning sketches and screenshots of the process of my piece. Initially I wanted to make a piece where I was confined to the ground by chains like in the sketches. However, I couldn't find a good way to take the picture since I was taking it myself and I was taking it by myself. In the days that we were doing this project it got really dark out and there was a thunderstorm, I took a few pictures of the sky during this time and those pictures make up my background. In order to make it look darker I messed with the brightness and contrast. The photographs of the chains were a set of chains my friend had that he allowed me to photograph. When I first started this piece I had no idea what I was gonna do so I just took pictures of things that looked interestingly inside my house and in my yard. Then when I actually knew what I was doing I purposefully looked for items I wanted to photograph.
Warhol's Monroe Portraits: I began looking at how Warhol made his portraits look almost sketched to help me figure out how I would go about doing that in Photoshop. I also looked at Warhol's use of color gradients in the facial area, to produce shadows. In this painting in particular Warhol made the shadows in Monroe's face and hair very dark which is what I did in mine too.
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Frida Kahlo's Self Portrait: I used the thorn necklace around her neck as inspiration for the chains coming out of my head in my piece. Also, in Kahlo's piece she has a very serious face expression, on mine in the other hand I used a happy expression to sort of portray naiveness and being oblivious to what's happening around us.
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Meaning: The meaning of this piece is to show how things in our life like stress, bound our minds. The chains represent the stresses in our life. While the body represents our minds ( e.g. Imagination,ideas) and self. In today's society were very focused on multi tasking and being as efficient as possible, and sometimes this limits our imagination. For example, when I was making this piece the due date limited the possibilities of the things I could make and the images that I would be able to take within the time limit.
Research:
Kahlo, Frida. Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird. 1940. Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, Austin. Web. Sept, 2015.
Warhol, Andy. Pink Marilyn. 1967. Niagara, n.p. Web. Sept. 2015.
Kahlo, Frida. Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird. 1940. Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, Austin. Web. Sept, 2015.
Warhol, Andy. Pink Marilyn. 1967. Niagara, n.p. Web. Sept. 2015.