Brett Henrikson is a visual artist who lives and works in Manhattan. He is currently pursuing his MFA (2019) from the School of Visual Arts and holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Since graduating from RISD, Brett has been an active member of artistic communities in Rhode Island and New York. He has worked with nonprofit organizations and taught darkroom photography in RISD’s pre-college program. Brett has also juried and curated shows on the current representations of the nude in photography, and on artists working in alternative and antique photographic processes.
Next Slide
Next Slide is multimedia project exploring the remixing of art history. It focuses on images of western classical art and mediates them through technology as a way to break down the space-time relationship that exists between the antique and the modern. It also comments on how events and visual works of art are traditionally historicized, calling to attention the subject act of recording.
The series is multi-faceted and contains photographic prints, textiles created on a jacquard loom, and 3D printed sculptures. Through slide scanning historical images, I use the physical interaction of my hand to alter the outcome of each final product. Akin to the musician that alters the playback of an audio file, distortions can occur and authorship can be transposed. By manipulating the images’ volume and form, I create environments uncoupled from their index. This process enables me to subvert the subject’s implied perfection, such as classically beautiful Western aesthetics. These actions create repetitions in the iconicity of the work and allows the viewer to enter a state of perceptual vertigo. Through these interventions I trace real and imaginary contours of sculptural objects and places out of time.
To view more of Brett Henrikson’s work please visit his website.