BRETT MARCEL

ARTIST STATEMENT:

My work is intricate, maximal, and psychedelic. Through painting and silkscreen I create auric and kaleidoscopic fields of interlacing design, coupled with hieroglyphic pop imagery, to support figuration and portraiture. My process is game-like and strategic. I categorize and systematically rotate motifs of abstraction: action expressionistic, hardline geometric, and sixties swirling color fields. These categories of abstraction symbolize specific non-visible aspects of the individual; their psychology, personality, imagination, potential, and energy. The interplaying layers of abstraction in a mandala structure provides a playful fluctuating platform for my subjects to take off from or build upon.

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For me, largely as a result of my own experiences, any sign or symbol is imbued with transformative meaning. The alchemical permeates our surroundings and any sign has the innate power to be utilized didactically. In the same stride as traditional alchemical and esoteric art, the tarot deck, for instance, provides us with a meta-technology. Its utility can be a spiritual navigational interface to guide us at pivotal points of our lives, or a tool to assist in the visualization of one's development. I aspire for my work to hold a furious optimism for the future. It serves as an invitation for people to develop their own modes of visualization, realize their potential for growth, and to engage in the world in a transformative way.