Everyone & No One (2020) Painting by Lewis Deeney

Our understanding of the world is shaped by our technology: from stone tools, to the light bulb and now the iPhone, our technology is used to build new technology and before long, we live in a world radically different from our ancestors. Technology not only effects the contents of our mind but its very structure: influencing not only what we think but also how we think. Technology is changing how we engage and interact with one another, it is changing our understanding of who we are. Our perception of the world, ourselves and each other is distorted through our relationship with our devices and that is what I ask you to contemplate when engaging with the work. What does it mean to be human in our increasingly digital world?

We have an innate ability to recognise faces, the structure of the face is so engrained into our perception of the world that we can recognise a face almost anywhere. Our mind composes objects in our visual field into a recognisable whole in an attempt to understand them. The mind interprets the shapes into a face and as a result creates an essence of being within the work. Without any distinguishing characteristics, the portrait is only that, a portrait, a face, an expression of a being in the world. Unable to label the face with any of the usual identities we label each other with, the portrait is simultaneously everyone and no one. Deconstructed, over-simplified and reconstructed out of painterly abstract shapes, the work reduces the face into an abstraction of geometric forms. Ageless, raceless and genderless, the subject holds no belief or ideology, simultaneously showing everyone and no one.

The work can be read in many ways, and that is my intention, asking, you the viewer, what do you experience when you see the work? Do you see yourself? Or do you see someone else? Do you see your digital persona?

The works intention is not to make you question my preconceived ideas about our relationship with technology but serves as symbol for you to consider your own, and how it effects your own unique perception of the world. The work serves as an environment for you to come to your own conclusion about it.
The process of the works creation is even a meditation over our relationship with technology, as the work itself is reliant on the technology of the laser cutter and cannot be made without it. Highlighting the integration of technology into our everyday lives. The precision of the machine is contrasted against the expressively painted surface: the unpredictable gestural abstraction of the human hand. Human and machine are confronted with each other to compose the work, in what I feel is a poetic process of creation to consider this issue.
Whatever position you take, whoever you are, the work is of you and not you, everyone and no one. The work asks you to see yourself in another and them in you.

Related themes

AbstractTechnologyExpressiveInnovativeContemporary