Artist Statement
Artist Statement
In my work, I strive for an emotional weight and balance between personal identity and collective memory while I search for personal, social, and cultural understanding. The images I capture are ambiguous in origin, but are generated from my personal experiences in diverse social and cultural environments. I approach photography as a non-linear narrative, juxtaposing layers of information that I collect from individual retention, as well as social and cultural experiences. The goal of my photographs is to create a body of work that reflects introspection - an internal moment of stillness that is based on cultural and personal symbolic imagery.
My intention is to create an association of different types of realities, I visually connect images and objects that I consider have a symbolic character in order to initiate a dialogue between them, and transform them into visual metaphors. I create sculptural settings that are the main frame for my photographs; using the human body, religious imagery, animal parts, clothing, fabric, decorative figurines, and toys, etc., as objects that constitute elements of signification, which serve as extensions of my memory. I strive to imbue these images with an emotional state, a quality that they do not literally possess but that is inherent in their role as signifiers. The images I generate in photographs deal with multicultural aspects as seen through the eye of the personal and the individual and its opposition to the global and the collective experience.
Contact & CV
EXHIBITIONS
2011 Winner Snap Orlando Photography Show, Center for Emerging Media, Orlando,FL
2010 Snap Orlando, Photography Show. Center for Emerging Media. Orlando, FL
2004 Orlando Public Library, Orlando, FL
2004 Longe Roset Gallery, Miami, FL
2003 Valencia Community College, Winter Park, FL
2003 Consulate General of Colombia, Miami, FL
2002 Stetson University, Deland, FL
2000 Seaside Music Theater, Daytona Beach, FL
1999 John F. Kennedy Space Center, Titusville, FL
1996, 1997 National University of Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia. Cano Room of University Art at Art Museum.
EDUCATION
2011 Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, MFA Photography
2008-2010 University of Central Florida, BFA Photography.
2006-2008 Valencia Community College.
1995 1999 National University of Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia, Visual Arts degree.
1997 Manuel Ancizar Symposium Aesthetics and Modernity, Luis Angel Arango Library, Bogotá, Colombia.
Jean Paul Gomez lives and works in New York City
