Unprepared for the Unprecedented Painting

Bio: Rochester, NY based artist Daniel DeLuna has exhibited his painting, drawing and digital work internationally. Starting as a painter, his work has been greatly extended and influenced by his engagement with digital media at the same time retaining the connection to the initial practice in those traditional mediums. Working with an abstract visual language, he creates richly evocative work influenced by art history, music, and design. He holds an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. and is currently Associate Professor in the School of Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Statement My work consisting of paintings, drawings, digital video and stills, engages with the language of abstraction. Superimposed intervals of horizontal or vertical lines generate a rhythmic structure with accents and beats that become the field for the foreground elements that often hold, or become surrogates for, figural associations. The work takes a nod at the history of traditional abstraction as filtered through and informed by the pervasive influence of technology on contemporary culture. Digital tools are used extensively in the creation of the work as I employ both common software as well as highly specialized high-end 3d animation applications. The gestural impulses, including erasures, as contrasted against the geometric, reflect my deeply ambivalent relationship with technology. I am searching for how to create meaningful aesthetic experiences in a culture where the visual is increasing debased by the image glut caused by our interaction with the digital realm. Themes from art history that frequently organize style and approach in into broad categories defined by binary oppositions, such as the romantic versus the classical, are important, as I attempt to synthesize these seemingly contradictory ideas. I want the works to be emotionally resonant, they do not make up a singular emotional statement but instead have a connection to the flows, forces, textures, rhythms and complex relationships we experience in everyday life.