TJ Norris

ARTIST STATEMENT:

A series of square-format works that pushes the boundaries of strait photography, attempts to break the format and methodically piece it back together. These works are built from a source file of images shot over decades, and influenced by random daily events: political, the cosmic beyond (UAP/UFO), familial (death + dying), social, gender/orientation bias, cultural, etc. The compositions are often intimate, offering the viewer a real opportunity to engage in a literal double-take of each image. The complete body of work consists of over one-hundred composite images made between 2022-2024. The series, ‘Cathartic Dissonance (an Urban Allegory)’ is a photographic series of various multiple-exposures, from my longstanding source image catalogue. This series is inspired by the sounds and other vantage points within various public spaces. With gentrification and urban planning skewed for future generations, this series infers an uncertain synaesthesia of displacement over the last decade. These images were shot in alleys, industrial sites, by-ways where poverty is rampant, though somehow retains all its colorful cracks and imperfections.

These works are a blend of socio-political, topical issues that employ an old Surrealist technique called ‘the exquisite corpse’ - which is basically a collection of broken thoughts, pieced together. This approach to image-making is somewhat new for me. It honestly came from a period when I was teaching and mentoring other up-and-coming photographers, suggesting alternatives to typical time-based methods normally associated with the medium. This is my first full foray into breaking the contract of making pictures in a traditional way. It’s like breathing new life into my work and feels more akin to other forms of art. These photographs are sandwiched, altered, digitally 'torn', sometimes randomly, sometimes coordinated, based on visual parity, sometimes to create visual tension. I tend to incorporate a blend of wabi-sabi. This way of working allows the reformulated image begins to create a new language, and gives me a whole new creative freedom.

TJ Norris | tjnorrisart.com | instagram.com/tjnorrisart

TJ Norris is an award-winning artist based in Texas. Norris’ work explores various social complexities and stigmas around gender, the built environment, loss, and even society's love affair/disconnect between humankind and technology. These are only a few of his conceptual metrics expressed through a filter of wabi-sabi and/or the result of chance (ie. 'the exquisite corpse'). He studied at MA College of Art and the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. Norris' work has been featured at Tacoma Art Museum, South Bend Museum of Art, Millepiani (Italy), A4 Art Museum (China), Oregon Center on Photographic Art, CoCA Seattle, the Orange Coast College Art Center, and several other institutions.