I am an Art Historian, Educator & Photographer. I am always seeking new ways of seeing this world, both literally and metaphorically. I have set foot on 6 of the 7 continents, and not just foot, the rest of my body followed, and sometimes even my brain.
R.K. Gabriel
Cloud Equivalent 1 (2020)
My images are an externalization of an inner search for understanding life as it has been experienced, both personally and historically. Many are composites, individually and collectively, of beauty, disillusionment, of acceptance and of historical perceptions of the human condition. My images are intended to play with contemporary comprehension of the connections between all social, cultural and natural life and how they provide meaning to existence.
Walter Benjamin wrote, “Just as the entire mode of existence of human collectives changes over long historical periods, so too does their mode of perception.” (The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility). My artwork keeps in the tradition of Man Ray’s experimental art and being influenced by László Moholy-Nagy’s ideas of restructuring and Production-Reproduction which create unfamiliar visual relationships. These images are fleshing out and creating such new relationships between historically established art objects and contemporary photography. There are also clear influences from Hannah Hoch’s socio-political collages and the surrealism of Herbert Bayer, as well as the “realm of the fantastic” that emerged in the post Great War period. The art of the Surrealists and of Dada were intended to stimulate viewers to see not only the art that was in front of them, but also to peer inside themselves and inside of culture. These are intended to evoke new ways of seeing.
This imagery is cathartic and is a means of exploring ideas and comprehension of humanity, yet simultaneously this imagery is a jumping off point for discussions between all seekers of knowledge and enlightenment.
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“Art is something that helps you love the world, or hate the world, or that complicates your views of the world.” (RKG)