Photo by Marcus Coblyn
Daniel O’Toole
Multimedia artist
Naarm (Melbourne), Australia.
Building on the Los Angeles 'Light and space' movement of the 1960’s, the work is positioned in the post-digital context of contemporary Australia. Working across the mediums of painting, video, sound, and installation, I blur the lines between disciplines – always looking for an outcome that unites the various aspects of my practice in a cohesive way.
My work embraces imperfection and low-resolution modes of recording as an aesthetic decision. I make videos of natural phenomena to use as a reference for paintings. These time-based works are a conflation of analogue and digital processes. Kinetic distortion, the movement of shadows, the refraction of light – these nuanced micro-events that can be easily missed in everyday life form the focus of the time-based works.
Inspired by personal experiences of synaesthesia, I seek to deliver a connected dialogue between sensory modes of communication; primarily between colour and sound. Various light-altering materials are used to affect visual perception and re-animate the static image. Questioning the ubiquity of the digital screen, the work emphasises 'seeing' as an active engagement rather than a passive receiving.
In a culture immersed in a digital dialogue, the value of images is in quick decline. The time for consideration is being eroded by an insatiable appetite for dopamine. The refraction effect that is explored in my sculptural-paintings, is intended to draw attention to the time it takes, for light to enter and return from the space within the frame.
Deliberately slowing down the viewing pace, it is an invitation to physically interact with distilled natural phenomena.