“Aberrations”

It’s not a secret that images have the ability to awaken different parts of our brains, and allow us to experience different things. We are an extremely visual society, and if you have been blessed with the gift of sight (I would assume if you’re reading these words), then how many times have you looked at a picture and found yourself completely being immersed at some random thought? Jim Kazanjian’s works could certainly cause your brain to trip out.

Well, I’m not an advocate for any sort of substance (artificial or not) that causes people to hallucinate, but I am all for hallucination by art. Think about it, art is really the result of an expression of an artist’s state of mind, feelings, thoughts, etc. Whatever Portland’s artist Kazanjian wanted to express while creating his digital photo collages which were titled “Aberrations” might never be fully answered (not even by himself), but the reaction one gets from our subconscious is almost that of a dark feeling or bad sensation although not in a bad way.

You may think of them as you like, but when I look at the photos is almost as if I am witnessing the end of the world of a futuristic planet very similar to ours. Pieces of a fallen moon shattering above a city, a labyrinth of crumbled homes where people used to hide against nuclear attacks, and the failed attempt to save what was left of a city by the shore, are some of the few examples of the weird things my mind sees when they look at Jim’s works. Nonetheless, if you don’t happen to trip out while staring at them, in the least you have to be able to appreciate the richness of the images themselves. The fact that he so wonderfully blended the different images to create something so homogeneous and harmonically aesthetic, is something to be admired. I take my hat off for these photo composites, and they seem to me the product of an even greater hallucination.