Ryan Feeney

MFA Candidate
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Untitled, 20 in x 30 in, Archival Inkjet Print © 2009

Untitled, 13 in x 20 in, Found Images, Tape, © 2009

Artist Statement: Ryan Feeney

This body of work is an exploration of a lexicon of images in which I am attempting to understand my identity, both culturally and individually. By looking at images from both personal and more general sources, I am looking into issues of personal and collective memory. Through this investigation I am searching to understand the difference between my family history and the history of a greater culture. I am interested in that relationship and the effect that those two histories have on each other. In searching for links between these images and my sense of nostalgia and memory, I experiment with how the images function as signs. By playing with mark-making, context and means of presentation, the punctum of these images shift, and through that shift they take on new signification and purpose. In shifting that punctum, these works aim to create a sort of cross section of a cultural experience. Breaking away from the image’s original context, it opens the material up to interpretation and forces associations based on personal experience. These works point out the different ways in which we come across images. This body of work asks questions about the effect these images have on us, and how things are shifting due to the digitalization of images. I am interested in looking at the gaps created by this work; the difference between an image and a reproduction of an image, the blurring that happens between the private and public spheres, and the difference between personal and found imagery. By looking at these gaps, this body of work calls attention to the how these images function. How they relate to each other and to the world around them. It is through these images that we gain an understanding of ourselves, our realities and our values, and it is through the interaction with this lexicon of that we are able to gain understanding of the effect of that lexicon on our histories and on our daily lives.