My work attempts to examine and bridge the gap between the lens of technology and the profound complexity of a lived experience. When we consider the world around us, color becomes one of the defining factors of our world. The way it pervades and encompasses our lives has an underlying effect on how we feel and process our spaces. I am fascinated by the psychological influence color has and how color can be used to create an emotional reaction in a person. I make paintings and sculptures that employ the use of positive and negative color spectrums. In my paintings, the colors of the human face invert. Natural, warm tones become cool and foreign, underlining the balance of positive and negative interactions, and exploiting the perception of an entire color spectrum at once. My sculptures are constructed with the concept of perfect binaries, where the left and the right mirror each other, and top and bottom become both opposites and doubles. These objects are painted in gradients of flat hues, with their inverted colors mirrored on the opposite face. 

Technology has become one of the defining factors of our interactions with the world. It flattens and pixelates our visual experiences and mediates the way we move through space. So often now, when visiting a museum or a gallery one will find seas of patrons holding a phone in between their face and an artwork. When viewing my work through a device, the color of my pieces can become perfectly inverted to their exact opposite. For this to happen, it takes the willing participation of the audience member to invert the color on their camera. This serves two purposes, one is the visual pleasure of seeing and playing with dichotomous color spectrums, and secondly, it causes the viewer to both acknowledge and interact with their device as a mediated tool, opposed to an accurate window into reality. Ultimately, my work is a deep contemplation on the relationships between color, perception, and psychology. In a world with such a dependency on technology, my art acts as a window into understanding our daily experiences while acknowledging the human desire for wonder and discovery in the sublime. 

Matthew Ramos (He, Him, His) | @immatthewramos