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The Salon, 1996
 Installation view, 2013
 Installation view, 2013
 Installation view, 2013
 Installation view, 2013
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 Using Willem van Haecht's painting of a kunstkamer (1593-1637) as a point of departure not only for a 1996 body of work but as the inspiration for my current installation I have assembled images from series spanning 1996-2013, creating a salon-style installation. Entitled "Transitions" this exhibition explores the relationships between images and the narrative threads that can be intuited from the juxtapositions. The installation becomes a montage of montages.
In my photographic works I make collages of images and texts. I am interested in how visual language communicates while also disrupting the picture plane. I often begin with an image culled from the newspaper, cropping and selecting a fragment of that picture. The photographs can depict crowds, architecture and cities. I also mine historical sources to create photomontages that juxtapose new and old. While my past photographic practice focused on the digital, I have now begun to reintegrate the artist's hand into my work. I do this by tracing images from the newspaper, holding them up to the window, drawing what appears on both sides of the page. These drawings are then scanned and collaged with the source imagery. In addition to printing these images as digital collages, I also project them, making gouache on paper paintings that soften the harshness of the crisp digital photographs while keeping the content intact.
On view in "Transitions" are images from my Art History (1996), Invisible Cities (1998), LA Seen (2001), and Bldg series (2002) as well as works from Of a Lost Utopia (2007). These large works are interspersed with selected smaller images from my Offset, Blur and Grid series creating a conversation between new and old.
Also on view is a new work consisting of 40 eight by ten inch digital collages that reduce media generated images to their essential pixels. They are sequenced to match a 40 page artist's book I created specifically for this exhibition. These digital collages become a visual and poetic meditation on the representation of contemporary culture.
 A 40 page artist's book accompanies this work presenting it as fixed sequence of 4.5 x 4.5 inch images. The images are also incorporated into the iPad/iPhone app 4 Square.
For a copy of the book ($10) email jzellen at gmail.com
To view the 40 images, click here.
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