Jason Contangelo

Jason Contangelo portrait.

Jason Contangelo

Jason Contangelo

MFA Candidate

Fine Art

Artist Statement

My work from a technical perspective centers on photographic process itself. Generally, it is oriented towards methods of introducing entropy, chance, and randomness into the equation, lessening the impact of human egotism and producing unexpected outcomes. In my film-based work, this has involved experimentation with solarization and chemical distortion primarily; Impacting either the film or the paper at various stages in development with light, omitting or adding chemicals at different points, taking multiple exposures, stacking negatives, essentially undermining the conventional methods of analog process. In my digital work, this has increasingly shifted towards code-based methods of photo editing, using simple algorithms developed in Processing to manipulate photographs at the pixel level, often introducing randomness into the outcome as well. This combines with gestural, naturalistic imagery to posit an underlying universality, a structure of reality in which human perspective is merely a small part, and entirely enmeshed within.