Content Generated | Morgan Buck

White Gallery | August 3 - 28, 2017

Reception: Friday August 11, 6 - 8pm

Curated by Jude Boatman

Previously to this body of work, all of my work for the past ten years has been dependent on painting in some way. Since doing this work my attention span has been shortened to where I don’t think I can seriously paint any more. Taking Iphone panorama distorted macro photo screenshots of images I find on Google has effected my perception of art. Painting and being a painter seems too much of an image of art and artist to me right now. I’m still an artist, but now I tend to see myself as someone who generates rarified content for contemporaneous image spaces. I think generating rarified content is much more descriptive than the all encompassing, yet seemingly say nothing title of artist, creative, or worst of all maker (yuck). Generating content, a term used by bloggers and other web media types, helps me get to the point that technology has radically changed my art and brain function. Everything I do whether art or posting pictures of my daily activities or choosing not to, it’s all generating content as if the container is life.

The Internet macro-panoramas, which is what I call this body of work due to its process, were first interesting to me because of their beautiful formal qualities and their ambivalence of meaning and medium. These images can mean whatever the viewer wants them to. Are they photos, digital collages, paintings, etc.? Idk. Then I thought about how with the Internet and all of the personal data going into search engines, social media, enveloping users in a tailor made reality that they can choose what truth is and stay in that content unchallenged. Anyone can post anything on the Internet and say it’s anything that they want. The end user of that information has to decide what to accept or call BS on. For this reason, this post truth aspect became a part of how I think about the work. This work is all lies, lies, lies.

Morgan Buck is a visual, performing, and recording artist living and working in Portland, OR. His work has been shown throughout the Portland area, and his musical and performative collaboration Child PM with Justin Stimson has performed throughout the northwest since 2009, and will soon release their second record, The American Dream is Dad, soon. He holds two degrees: an MFA in Craft from OCAC in 2015, and a BFA in Painting from PNCA in 2010. He’s now looking forward to leaving the country in the fall for Leipzig, Germany to participate in the three month long Pilotenkueche International Artist Residency.