Join us in the BCA Gallery 5-7pm Friday, January 10 for the opening reception of the Andrew Ortiz Collection. The collection features work from his Electroencephalograms and Blackbird Speaking Series.
This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. The reception is sponsored by George Olson.
The Andrew Ortiz Collection will be on display January 7 - February 28, 2025.
Notes from the artist:
I started out my artistic career as a photographer and began experimenting with computers as an artistic tool in 1994. At that time, I was using digital image-making in conjunction with photography, mainly to conveniently collage photographic images and incorporate text into my work. Over the years, the work has become more abstract - more reliant on visual symbols rather than written language to create the narrative.
My current research began from a body of work titled Measured Disorder that I started working on in 2011. It is a highly personal narrative of my lifelong struggles with seizure disorders. Often dark in both emotional content and physical appearance, the images are computer-manipulated collages of original photographs and scanned items that seek to express the intense psychological impact of dealing with physical challenges.
The images in the series are meant to express both a process and an experience - what it's like having seizures as well as the medical "measuring" one undergoes on an ongoing basis. Sometimes disembodied, sometimes clinical, sometimes mystical, the images attempt to communicate my varied experiences with epilepsy.
About six years ago, I made a subtle change in my subject matter. I became interested in symbolizing the idea of neurons and chromosomes, and the changes that differentiate between normal and abnormal brain functioning. I imagine the neurons as lines of communication - interconnecting branches that reach out to convey information. Sometimes there is a breakdown, and one end does not understand the other end. Messages go wrong. Cells touch each other with violent bursts of electricity. The connections are lost. The work at that time began to incorporate more organic forms such as trees and roots to symbolize anatomical systems.
Three years ago, I started experimenting with even more abstract work utilizing the idea of EEG graphs that map the brainwave activity. At the same time, I went back to printing the work in a panoramic format that I had not used in many years. The concept underlying my work, seizure disorders and their associated issues, remains the same, but the presentation mode has been expanded over the past six years. So far, this seems to have been a successful direction to take as the work has been selected for inclusion in several juried competitions and open calls for exhibitions in the past year with several more coming up in 2025.
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