Jason Gorcoff
Artist/ Educator
Growing up in the 80s, I was absorbed in popular culture: films, video games and comic books. The realism and drama invented by illustrations for movie posters, game cartridges, and special effects in horror and science-fiction films inspire the aesthetic of my work. I use personal experience and the language of popular culture from my youth to tell simple narratives of good, evil, and the human condition, in hopes of connecting with viewers on a basic human level.
Formally, representational work is an illusion of form and space on a two-dimensional surface. The world of stories —of heroes and monsters— are all illusions; in short, they are lies. But lies can produce boundless opportunities for a viewer as they show us places that do not exist. These places use metaphor to illustrate how life feels, but not how it actually is. It is a world where you can freeze a moment and meditate on its fleeting content. As Stephen King puts it, “Fiction is the truth inside the lie.” With my paintings I do not offer the viewer any concrete moral guidance. I do not tell them what to distrust or critique, or what social or political demons to be wary of. On the contrary, I attempt to offer them escape— a look into a world where they will discover a place of strange elemental beauty and mystery.