Joseph Mcgehee BFA Painting + Drawing Thesis Spring 2016
Deviant Notions: Toward A Theory of Fan Art and The Derivative
My recent drawings and paintings are involved with the abject aesthetics of online fan art, gleaning specifically from fan art referential to mid-2000’s science fiction entertainment.
My vigorous online research practice informs the content and stylization of the drawings and paintings I have generated for my thesis. These artworks function as derivatives of an already derivative art. In these images, video game characters, obtuse war vehicles, and angular weapons are rendered in landscapes ravaged by war and ecological collapse or within nightmarish ethereal realms.
I insist that this work is not so communicative. Like the entertainment these signifiers point to, it behaves affectively. My intention is to create a space of resonance where we may feel aesthetic character and make subjective associations pertaining to the experience and ideology of recent entertainment.