With RED WHITE & BLUE Massey disavows his enquiry into how the self is actualized, to the point of questioning that enquiry's continuing validity in this moment of political upheaval, where the relationship between representation and truth has become acutely unhinged.
John Massey's projects are frequently linked to the camera, and to photo-conceptualism. Even if, in recent years, he has consummately embraced the possibilities of digital manipulation, the resulting images have been in their final form photomechanically produced and are thereby reproducible as editions. While this latest project, titled RED WHITE & BLUE continues to construct works digitally, the final stage of the process involves the manual application of paint to sections of the surface, which in turn dominate the image and hit the eye with astonishing force. This use of paint ostensibly represents a jump in Massey's practice, in that it both transforms the image into a photo-digital and painted amalgam and also produces a unique image that cannot be reproduced. Coupled with this jump is the direct manipulation of pre-existing artworks, albeit 19th century editioned engravings that are themselves stylized interpretations of paintings in European museum collections. Previous projects have exploited canonical works from art's history to Massey's own ends, but never before has he so emphatically sequestered and radically deformed an existing image.
However, neither in citing art history, nor in producing unique painted images is Massey marshalling any claim to authenticity. Rather, RED WHITE & BLUE, which most obviously references the US flag, alludes to the impossibility of authenticity at a moment when "truth, and the possibility of critical observation, is under attack." This is the cornerstone of the project and it represents a far more profound shift in his practice than simply a change in subject matter, material or medium. - excerpt from an essay by Gregory Burke
