Chad Wys

Chad Wys, produces many images and sculptures but one series of his work I am particularly interested in is called the Noctume. These images are of Victorian portraits that he would gather from the Internet or textbooks.textbooks. Wys alters pre-existing prints and decorative objects. Wys manipulates the images digitally but looks like actual painting techniques. The series is about artistic traditions and the the presence and absence of visual information. He neglects much of the arts purpose which is to show beauty and realistic. His work is about the deconstruction of what art is and what are means.

 When looking through the images in the Noctume series, among the other pieces of work you see that they are all of old Victorian images with the face covered and sometimes the body. Some images the eye is left uncovered. The images have paint brush strokes all over the image or spray paint dripping down. There is a number of Victorian images in gold frames with bright coloured paint dripping down.The images have no clear narrative and this ideally puzzles and provokes the viewer. 

Wys had studied how different paint is best to use in his image and which is best to drip down the frame to get his images just right. Furthermore some images have a vase in front of their face to hide their identity which I think is an interesting twist to make the image more interesting and experimenting with different medias and objects are all trial and error to see if it looks right. Most of these images hide the persons identity. This is what I want my work to entail, that you the viewer by seeing the images doesn't know who it is and is puzzled into thinking more about the image. My intentions are similar as I want to take to take images of people male and female posing or natural and in different ways cover the face with brightly coloured paint just like Wys. Our style is very similar in the use of using paint in a messy brush strokes over the face. 

Wys goal is to make these old Victorian images more fresh and modern. In a recent interview Wys questions the purpose of portraits and asks "what really is the portraits purpose? We come away understanding more about the artist and their decisions he or she made in portraying the sitter, then the person being depicted. So what really are portraits for?" He also says "through my interference- by eliminating visual clarity in most cases- i'm primarily trying to emerge the viewer in an internal dialogue about ones projections and ones perception of art and images in general, and potentially even how we perceive other people." I find this really interesting what Wys is saying again he wants the viewer to think about the image and art.

Here are some of the many pieces of work Wys has created.