Tony Ortega
Artist Statement
Throughout history, artists have responded to social concerns around them with artwork that depicts culture, religion, social injustice, human rights, environmental degradation and political power. Artists have used a variety of media such as: paint, photographs, pastels, sculpture and prints as extensions of their caring hearts and concerned minds to explore the aesthetics of interconnectedness and social responsibility. I believe that there is a relationship between art and social justice. My goal as an artist is to create artworks that are personal and which also express a sense of social responsibility.
As an expressionist, I use distortion and exaggeration for emotional effect. I apply vivid and dynamic mark making, line density and value contrast. I combine flat space with cubical space. My work interweaves the western concepts of perspective, light/shadow, and overlapping of shapes with folk art designs of simplified geometric shape creating a harmonious composition. Merging abstraction, simplification, and realism, I juxtapose and superimpose unlikely images of realism, icons, symbols and fantasy from history and the contemporary world to foster opportunities for the bending of meaning and the warping of time and place.
The collective is the primary focus in all my work. Individuals in my artwork are faceless because they are important only to the extent that they help define the group-the community interacting and participating in its many rituals, social settings, and group functions. My artwork of common everyday life incorporates elements of magical realism; it confronts reality and attempts to untangle it, to understand the mystery of life and human events. Vital is not the creation of imaginary beings or worlds, but rather the discovery of the mysterious relationship between human beings and their circumstances. I do not try to replicate the surrounding reality. Instead, I seize and illuminate the mystery behind things. I attempt to depict not objective reality, but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in me. Magical realism mashes up, transgresses, reforms and transforms ideas into my magical vision without losing sight of social, political, historical and aesthetic qualities.
Through my work, I offer a multifaceted fiction that incorporates the traditions, history and culture of Latinos. In the postmodern age, my visual language speaks to the issue of international migration, focuses on shifting demographics, draws from pop culture and seeks to present truth at a more local, personal level.
Artist Statement
Throughout history, artists have responded to social concerns around them with artwork that depicts culture, religion, social injustice, human rights, environmental degradation and political power. Artists have used a variety of media such as: paint, photographs, pastels, sculpture and prints as extensions of their caring hearts and concerned minds to explore the aesthetics of interconnectedness and social responsibility. I believe that there is a relationship between art and social justice. My goal as an artist is to create artworks that are personal and which also express a sense of social responsibility.
As an expressionist, I use distortion and exaggeration for emotional effect. I apply vivid and dynamic mark making, line density and value contrast. I combine flat space with cubical space. My work interweaves the western concepts of perspective, light/shadow, and overlapping of shapes with folk art designs of simplified geometric shape creating a harmonious composition. Merging abstraction, simplification, and realism, I juxtapose and superimpose unlikely images of realism, icons, symbols and fantasy from history and the contemporary world to foster opportunities for the bending of meaning and the warping of time and place.
The collective is the primary focus in all my work. Individuals in my artwork are faceless because they are important only to the extent that they help define the group-the community interacting and participating in its many rituals, social settings, and group functions. My artwork of common everyday life incorporates elements of magical realism; it confronts reality and attempts to untangle it, to understand the mystery of life and human events. Vital is not the creation of imaginary beings or worlds, but rather the discovery of the mysterious relationship between human beings and their circumstances. I do not try to replicate the surrounding reality. Instead, I seize and illuminate the mystery behind things. I attempt to depict not objective reality, but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in me. Magical realism mashes up, transgresses, reforms and transforms ideas into my magical vision without losing sight of social, political, historical and aesthetic qualities.
Through my work, I offer a multifaceted fiction that incorporates the traditions, history and culture of Latinos. In the postmodern age, my visual language speaks to the issue of international migration, focuses on shifting demographics, draws from pop culture and seeks to present truth at a more local, personal level.