PDX Contemporary Art, Portland, OR
March 31 - May 1, 2021
PDX CONTEMPORARY ART is pleased to present new work by Seattle-based artist Joe Rudko who uses photography as a point of departure for exploring the perception of truth in the visual. By disassembling fixed images and creating new visual relationships with color, line, and shape, he invites us to reexamine how we author and interpret the experience of looking at photography.
Support System consists of found images from various sources and time periods that the Artist has methodically cut and assembled into new images. Referencing both Mesopotamian mosaic and photographic pixels that make up digital photographs, Rudko melds together found images to create large edge to edge collages. In this process, the Artist removes the context from the original images, creating new context for the images as a whole.
Working with photos of positive and hopeful imagery, these collages, made during 2020 and 2021, are a response to the challenges of the past year. Images of cake, flowers, blue sky, and sculptures, among others, are conduits for looking to things that are generally regarded as celebratory or pleasing. Collecting images of flowers to arrange in a bouquet, making an image full of blue sky, and constructing a large cake out of images of cakes, Rudko’s exhibition brings light to our collective love of beauty as evidenced through the many photographs found and employed by the artist.
