BONDING THROUGH SHARED EXPERIENCES OF ISOLATION: AN INTERVIEW WITH ANGEL DURAN
Angel Duran is a visual artist currently working and residing in New Jersey. Working primarily with oil paint, his paintings explore the relationship between painting and photography. He has showcased his work throughout the New York Metropolitan area, as well as in AXA Art Prize. He was nominated for the prestigious Yale Norfolk Summer Residency, amongst other honors and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Mason Gross School of the Arts.
Fundamentally, Duran’s works serve as an exploration of the relationship between painting and photography. Thematically, they inquire into the role urbanization plays in social fragmentation and the disintegration of human interactions. By often depicting isolated figures roaming through empty and artificially-lit cityscapes, his hope is to highlight how—instead of forming intrapersonal relationships—metropolitan areas can help foster the feeling of isolation; But also, he hopes to form a communal experience built upon our shared moments of isolation.
A frequent technique Angel Duran incorporates into his paintings is the bokeh effect found in photography. Bokeh is defined as the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image; however, his intention is not to simply paint blurry photographs, but rather, to address a hierarchy through blurring. For example—while still able to use figures as his prime subject matter— the blurring of the image allows him to investigate artificial light as its own subject matter. Everything becomes equally important and equally insignificant. What is left is emotional resonance.
Applying this idea of the aforementioned hierarchy between painting and photography, he incorporates qualities traditionally considered unique to photography into his paintings. Distorting the subject allows for the bridging of the two in much the same way as contemporary artist, Gerhard Richter. The process in which these pieces are created—by stitching, collaging and photo-shopping seemingly unrelated photos to create a seamless image—relates strongly to the falsification of social media and technology’s encroachment on art. On can argue that this process also lends itself to politicization—as it allows Duran to fully dissolve pre-existing social and political binaries in order to create images as he sees fit.
