Zachary Presley's Page

Relationship status

in a relationship

College / University

Wichita State University

Program / Degree

Print Making Grad Program

Graduation

May 20, 2012

Member type

Artist

If you're an artist, what kind of art do you make?

Digital, Printmaking

I am...

A native born Oklahoman that is a proud member of the Chickasaw Nation, living in Wichita, Kansas. I am an incoming Graduate student for the Print Making department.

About my artwork

Zachary Presley, Artist Statement
Copying the real; this is one way to describe photographs. Though photographs are a way of capturing moments and places, they are far removed from being anything other than images. Then the question becomes why do we apply “substance” and “qualities” to these secondary experiences?
Umberto Eco once said that we not only enjoy a perfect imitation, we also enjoy the conviction that imitation has reached its apex and afterwards reality will always be inferior to it. The imitation of reality is a concept that I use in this body of work. My work often uses appropriated images that, based on how I experience them, conceptually form the work.
I deconstruct the images intentionally in order to make them fit my needs. I assign memories to images their moments never involved, until I acquired them. Once acquired, I look at them not as “image,” but in a way similar to the people involved in their creation; subjectively. This does not mean that my reflections on these images are the “right ones”; however, my reflections become experience, thereby lending “truth value” to these images. This is an example of hyper reality, or a perversion of reality.
Though these hyper realities are never “real,” they are still experiences. One view of experience is a general concept of knowledge or observation of something or some event, gained through involvement or exposure to that thing or event. One might also differentiate between physical, mental, emotional and spiritual experiences. These realities are formed by interaction with the environment, based on how I process information and store it. Neurological networks have many variables like relativity, and thus affect individual experience of any given situation. I react to images and perceive them as significant.
After the concept is formed, the work is created through several aesthetic choices. One of these choices is color. For example, the color red can have a physical effect on the viewer, increasing the rate of respiration and raising blood pressure. Red signifies a multitude of meanings, and the ambiguity attracts me. Appropriated images form grid structures that are important in setting moods of stability or instability. The pictures in each layer are fragments to a world presumed “real” by the viewer, but in fact make up a world custom fitted for the concepts behind the work.
Also, in these “worlds” I try to abolish the depth of time. Past and future along with present often find themselves so entangled, it is hard to tell them apart. These feelings may not be what one would call false, but perhaps idealizes versions of truth, a hopeful and preserving act, a common practice of man and his relationships that shape his collective experience, a popular fiction.

Artists I like

Barbara Kruger,Robert Rauschenberg, Ray Johnson, & Andy Warhol

Interests

Concerts, movie going, traveling, showing, making

Centre of the artworld:

nowhere and everywhere