"Flower Still Life I" Mixed Media Limited edition by Roberto Voorbij

Title: Flower Still Life I
Medium: Photo paper on underlayment, prisma acrylic, brass
Size: 22.2 W x 29.1 H x 1.4 D inch
Edition: 3
Year: 2021

Info:
This series of prism works has been chosen specifically for religious and mythological images. This explicit connotation can also be found in the work 'Flower Still Life I'. The appropriated original artwork dates back to the 17th century, a time when the vast majority of people believed that nature, like the Bible, was a revelation from God. Some went even a step further, assigning each single element a specific, God-inspired meaning. Both tangible nature and its mimetic representation. Both flora and fauna. Thus the lily could stand for cleanness and purity and so for Mary or Gabriel, grapes for the blood of Christ, the rose for Venus. By placing the flower still life from 1647 behind a geometric grid various new meanings arise. The analog pixels caused by the plastic pyramid structure act as the scrambled image for a suspect. At the same time, the plate seems to function as a protection for the vulnerable. Is this series about censorship? Or about protecting the weak? The contrast between the geometric shapes and the organic representation creates a further significant tension. Just like the paradox between the distorted image that seems to want to hide something and the everyday image of the flower bouquet. Like a Lynchian tension brewing beneath the everyday.