BIO:

Jeff Demetriou is an American artist best known for his highly conceptual mixed media and installation works that combine philosophical and existential principals into a unique work process that incorporates photography, digital design, collage, painting and drawing. Themes such as the nature of perception, objectification, idealism, and opposition are common throughout his work, which has been described by many as both meditative and self-reflective. Demetriou's work can be found in private and public collections from around the world including Turner, Bank of America, and the High Museum of Art. Currently, Demetriou is working on a series of large-scale paintings based on the recorded memories of surveyed participants, and has just recentycompleted work on one of the largest public murals in the Southeast located in downtown Atlanta. Click here for CV.

'STATEMENT':

In a time when our attention, and to a large extent our culture, is so very often commanded and shaped by the superficial, petty and destructive aspects of our society, the role of art and the artist must be one of a subverter and challenger to such things, rather than simply being an imitator or champion of them.

My work is intended to be an impetus for self-reflection and objectivity. It's an appeal to the viewer to stop and honestly question not only the individual role that he or she plays in society and the world as a whole, but also the role individual perception has in shaping and constructing the reality and context in which we all exist.

Of course in the end, the real importance and relevance of a work lies not in its ability to generate chatter, command a high sales price, or even promote deep reflection, but in its solely unique relationship with the viewer. Anything outside of this relationship purported to hold value or influence is meticulously adorned nonsense...so I suppose you should ignore everything I just said.

THE OVERTURE SERIES:

While being introductory in the sense that the Overture series represents the beginning of a fairly new direction for my work, these 'overtures' are also intended to be an introduction of sorts to a different way of perceiving our role and impact upon the world around us. More specifically, how we as human beings, along with our inseparable endeavors, might be perceived by something that, by our definition and understanding of the term, has no ability to perceive; nature.

The series in general deals primarily with concepts surrounding the idea of nature as being a single sentient entity that possess the ability to have both imaginative and abstract reflections on its own 'reality', as well as simultaneously having the ability to be completely analytical and empirically evaluative; attributes that are inherently contradictory to nature itself.

This intrinsic dichotomy of seemingly diametrically opposing perspectives of reality is imagined in the work as a visual representation of what nature's abstract reflection or meditation on us, and itself, might look like. So in a sense, I'm taking on the role of nature as the 'abstract painter' rather than myself, and the compositional elements that are realized in the work are a result of my brief adoption of this perspective.

Similar to the role of a Zen koan, the series' imagery itself, in its most simplest of terms, is paradoxical and intentionally ambiguous in nature and is intended to jar viewers' instinctual and habitual modes of perception; if only for an instant.

In many respects, the series functions as a mirror; reflecting viewers' own fears, dreams, goals, expectations, etc. back at them. People feel what they want to feel and see what they want to see in the work. Some people see "crosshairs" and violence in the work, while others see points of life or even camera viewfinder brackets. Though these interpretations are not where the series springs from, conceptually or visually, they do speak more so about the viewer and the headspace they're in rather than the work itself...which is entirely intended and welcomed.

THE MALFUNCTION SERIES:

The only things in the world capable of purely objective, rational, and logical decision-making and/or evaluation are machines; more specifically, computers. Having this be the case, I thought it would be interesting to visually represent a computer's interpretation of the almost endless litany of ideals, systems, institutions, industries, and beliefs that we as humans have not only created, but have reconciled in our general psyche as being perfectly normal, rational, natural, and logical.

What we are as human beings, by nature, is irrational, illogical, and imperfect. So what happens when, in many ways, the antithesis of 'us' analyzes and evaluates the things we no longer even question the validity or existence of? The goal of the series is to better objectify the many things we as humans innately accept as simply being part of the human condition, or have reconciled in our heads as being reasonable/rational, yet are often times some of the primary determinants of our suffering and demise due to their inherently illogical, contradictory, and/or irrational nature.

The process itself involves taking a representative or symbolic image of the subject matter and importing it into the computer. Once there, the image's code, or computer's language, is viewed, and additions are made. I essentially 'teach' the computer about the particular subject by telling it everything the subject causes in the world, both good and bad. From emotional upheaval to environmental degradation, the computer is fed as many rudimentary phrases, as I can think of about the subject at hand, through the image code.

The resulting image is one that is 'broken' as some would term, but in essence, or at least for the purposes of this series, the image is in fact the computer's perspective of the subject. It's level of 'brokenness' or seeming 'malfunction' is meant to act as a mirror, enabling us to see the true nature of the things we consider to be the complete opposite. Though the image is further worked by me, both in the computer and as its being applied to the canvas, the basis for the image starts in the process detailed above.