Chukwuemeka Anthony Chukwu
MFA Thesis: Bi-Product
School of Visual Arts
2023
Artist Statement
My work is primarily painting and material exploration of connections between themes in select contexts like sciences, architecture, art as a familiar practice, media and gaming. I use the constant bringing of these elements to navigate personal experiences, starting each piece at times with brand new approaches. I make use of acrylics, gels, and tapes. I intend to spark conversations of similar experiences that may be hinted at from piece to piece. At times political conclusions are drawn surrounding race, blackness, learning experiences as a Diaspora African from the vast use of material or image depiction. With the constant bridging of these elements, I call on viewers to connect dots and find common ground.
I approach my creative practices as more of a language of communicating experiences, how I can apply them and forming an ecosystem of varying forms of creative expression like car journalism, painting, engineering, architecture, gaming and so on. As my interests and experiences grow so do my avenues to explore.
Additionally there’s various combinations of approaches as if they were beakers in a lab, one might be formal intuitive experimentation, and one is familiarity with architecture, structure and systems. I get to mix them in infinite proportions to produce a variety of results.
Each painting becomes super charged with moments that made it come to be as well its influences and deeper study or analysis. I capture the experience of gaming, something that’s been vital in my upbringing as a child living in a dangerous part of Lagos city and not much opportunity to go outside and play asides in school. Depicting camos or skins that scream mastery and expertise of both the practice of gaming and the making of visual art.
I set out to start discussions surrounding the work in a unique way, discussions of inclusion as a black man in an online gaming space and how hostile it can be towards me in an unpoliced or unchecked space, discussions of real life issues like gun violence and systematic racism.
I use acquired technical ability and experiences like my study in architecture to take a deeper dive into moments of the work and tell of my understanding of elements in the work and what makes them tick.
My work is ultimately a commitment to restlessness in various forms and if there was such a thing as a ‘whimsical strategist’ I’d imagine he’d operate this way.
Project Statement
Bi-Product
Bi-Product is a body of paintings that integrate with sculpture and installation to explore connections between architecture, art as a familiar practice and gaming. The title was chosen as a direct representation of how these elements are part of my own background, studies and obsessions, and thus become the Bi-Products of my own process of understanding and navigating through these elements.
I have completely different approaches to starting different pieces . I force the Work to slowly grow or inform itself from that point onward. I instinctively flesh out each piece with autonomy while questioning the importance of parts of its composition constantly. Some pieces like the largest I call ‘Federation’ that started with a Blue black almost pearlescent gradient as a base for calculated interwoven line work, mark making or further intricate painting applications. These marks are made impulsively and instinctively as responses to the ones before. A natural system of painting and embracing it as a form of art making.
I'm also figuring out either new subject material or mark making that may better inform the work, these could be new imagery collaged onto the work long after initial planning to be further analyzed visually by a various forms of technical drawing rooted in my architectural design practice or intuitive mark making as a depiction of visceral understanding.
With Varying approaches, constant experimentation or a combination of both comes with varying intentions. In some instances the intention is to do some story telling of experiences in gaming culture, and the reality from my own perspective, using this branch of personalized entertainment to communicate experiences of joy that may come with unpoliced racism exemplified by work including specific captured clips of call of duty, highlights of slurs flying across chats that may enrage or insight an additional competitive spirit in some players, it becomes this toxic virtual environment that i communicate in my work with this palette of painting, collage and drafting techniques. I intend for formal intuitive mark making in some pieces to intersect learned procedures of architectural design and familiarity in the act of painting, capturing time and the act of doing something precious about the work.
