Depending on whose data you trust, some 3.2 billion (that’s 3,200,000,000) images are shared daily on social media, not to mention the number of videos, which is around 720,000 hours daily. That number seems to grow exponentially. The content ranges from innocent images of our pets to deep fakes that attempt to sway the truth in order to manipulate us. In addition, sophisticated algorithms curate what we view—if you tend to seek out images of cats swimming, social media platforms give you more images and videos of cats swimming!
Our access to this massive amount of image data and the ways in which we interact with it are explored through the work of Luke Harnden in his current exhibit at the OJAC titled Dreams of You. Through his process, he selects an image from his various sources: social media, personal photographs, and even those from print materials. Each individual image Harnden chooses to manipulate into a painting is thoughtfully considered. The results of his endeavors seem to slow the image viewing process, more than we are now accustomed to or comfortable with. We can now consider it more carefully….yet in doing so it seems to disintegrate before our eyes.
Regardless of whether it’s billions of images we attempt to retain or just one, they are all fleeting—disappearing as a dream or distant memory.
Patrick Kelly
Executive Director & Curator
Diver, 2022. LUKE HARNDEN. Acrylic on Canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Barry Whistler Gallery, Dallas.