METAMORPHOSIS: Alice/Malice

An epiphany striked my mind. I'm old, I'm eighteen, I'm legal. Practically, I'm an adult. Practically, I knew I had to leave youth on a close time frame, which is why I never really grieved. I've anticipated loss to strike me in a much more cruel way, in between happiness. Through sadness, I've learned that, based on a soap comedy I watched yesterday, that pain in just weakness leaving the body. I knew at one point I had to choose, do I want to go for love, or do I want to go for art. Do I want to stay in this metropolitan, yet limited city, or spread my wings to the edges of the world. Knowing that one day, spreading my wings will leave inevitable shadows on the lives I've touched. Art is a wonderful medium of expression. It ceases to provoke, yet with beauty. Art isn't necessarily only subjective, it is a reflective medium of what a generation presents. It always, always, always, can be seen as a controversial figure.

I've learned that my life is a performance art piece. It is a media of expression to tell a story. A reflection of where I want to drive my life towards, to endless summers or to the pot of gold behind rainbows?. Whether I want to live everyday like my last, or keep wishing for another day. To waste my youth on pure happiness, or waste it to work hard for the things I want.

Because one day, I want to call my parents and tell them I've made it.

I want to see the sunset, by the bonfire at the beach, raising my glass for all the choices I've made.

Perhaps my words symbolizes me being two faced.

Or perhaps it symbolizes that I just have more aspects to myself which is visible to only myself.
The persona representing the girl is divided into three different persona.

I produced "METAMORPHOSIS: Alice/Malice" as a result of the perfect hourglass theorem. A symmetrical timing perfectly capturing the sunset hued liquid leaving the oral cavity. Why is the liquid orange? Was she poisoned? Was she happy? Did she get a hungover?

The true answer lies in the back of the viewer's heads. As much as an artwork is an artists statement, the true controversy sparks from the provocation of the viewers. Personally, for me, orange represents the mild warmth of what she was releasing. It was anger, it was emotion, but it had it's reasons. It's not blood red, it's sunset orange. It's about freedom of speech, it's about letting it all out, but please do that before the sun sets. Before the day turns dark after orange. Before the emotions pile up and results as unlikely bile, poisoning the body. It is an expression of how we, as human beings, should let it all out to make ourselves feel better, but to forget about it after sunset. It isn't good to carry poison in your body, so make sure you don't regret it.

Powdered with flour. The girl in the left expresses the coldness of her heart. The worries, the regrets, the true emotional breakdown. The shadows killing the light our of her life. Was she blinded by worldly possessions? Or was she blinded from reality?. The true epitome lies in fantasy, she copes with all the pain by escaping reality, by letting dust alter her reality with dreams of a perfect land. The weakness of not facing reality, yet the strength of letting dream come in her way. Deceiving the cruelty by an immoral lullaby, which is pride. Pride will carry her nowhere but back home. Because she's got nothing if she doesn't let it all out. Sadness is poison, the bile contains toxic.

Then there's the beauty in crying (the girl on the right). Letting it out, but it all seems to not be enough. Another part of letting it our. Another persona, perhaps. Tears are both a reflection of weakness and strength. The strength to release all the weakness. Do you still want to negotiate with insecuirites? Don't you want to wash it all out of your life?. Wash it all away, wash away all the concealed feelings. You can change like a season, but when you need to lose all of your leaves and go through a tough snowstrom, remember that there is still life inside your roots. Was it an emotional approach? It's a realistic one.

Art is what you get out of a collision of ultimate narcissism and demeaning insecurity. Art is that explosive result of what you get in between. That is why she lets it all out. Through an ethereal approach of beauty and art, the vomit is being represented of letting all of the negativity run out of her. That is how I face my problems, I let it all out in the canvas of photography. It's truly a mutualism of the body and the artwork. Make sure it's strong enough to be both an approach of deforestation of the forest of sadness. Make sure you are your own Nightingale. Make sure you got yourself. You decide your path, you are your own creature, you know yourself best. Make sure natural selection doesn't force you to change that niche. However, always be open to lessons.

This past month has been a roller coaster experience for me. The devastation I have to face on the last week has been massive. One thing or another, I know my flaws, and what I have to do to them is embrace them towards an artwork. If it is radioactive, it is truly a wavelength of an artwork. If it is dissapointment, embrace that, if it is expectations you believe in, reach them. In life, you are your only hero. Everyone else is busy saving themselves. So make sure you embrace that, make sure you are your own super hero with your own super powers. I think I just claimed mine.

"METAMORPHOSIS: Alice/Malice" a piece commenting on personal grief and alter egos will be on the digital showing of "Exposure 2015" in The Louvre, Paris, France. I am very grateful I've took the step of using all of my thoughts as an artwork. It is still ethereal at times witnessing where this piece has gotten into. The symmetrical lines, the butterfly symbolism, the heads, the hair. It all makes sense in the least possible way. A big thank you to Giovana Christie as the muse as well as Shelley Sebastian as the make up and hair mastermind. Bravo.

THE PHOTOGRAPHIC SENSE

METAMORPHOSIS: ALICE/MALICE

PAR. Reinhardt Kenneth

Model. Giovana Christie

Hair & Make Up. Shelley Sebastian

Barmecidal Remedy

Our visions are images captured onto the back of our minds. They are a formation and a collision of atoms forming this sort of, body of memories.

Lately I've been experiencing constant nightmares. These nightmares, however, don't necessarily haunt me. In the weirdest way, I'm usually grateful for them. When you have a beautiful, exciting dream, you eventually get dissapointed that the dream is only a barmecide. You wish everything that happened in that dream --- the new Disneyland in Australia where it rains toys or money, or getting a kiss from your crush, or anything as bizarre --- happened. You wish that all the butterflies you caught translated to the good news you'd get on the next day. Let's face it, sweet dreams set up a rather impossible goal for a realistic matter. However, your nightmares, eventually they put out the best in you for the next day. Apart from being very cautious and protective to your loved ones(which may be involved in your gruesome nightmare), you get to live life to the fullest, to be grateful that none of those bad things actually happened. Nightmares put you to the worst perspectives as a stepping stone to learn. You can call these visions intuition or just a metaphorical imagery of our days, but eventually, these weird sh*t put the best visions for The Photographic Sense.

I utilize art and photography as a medium to truly express myself in a judgemental-free world. In the name of aesthetic and subjectivity, I'd have to say that my works are both influenced by inspirations from real-life experiences and my very own dreams.

Barmecide |ˈbärməˌsīd|(also Barmecidal |ˌbärməˈsīdl|) rareadjective [ attrib. ]illusory or imaginary and therefore disappointing.

Through the denotation of barmecide we view above, the word leads to disappointing illusory or imaginary. In particular, benefits that are disappointing. This juxtaposition leads to my vision of reality itself. You get offered by thousands of opportunities, but eventually, you'd have to sell your creativity(or some prefer, soul) to the mass to be mainstream. To eventually give up the rest of your experimental vibe for the public who knows nothing about a good picture. These series leads to an experimental outtake on how I really see things. The distortion of beauty, social commentary, and last but not least, youth.

All of these artworks are not photographed, they are scanned. I teamed up with my long time muse, Irene Wihandi, in producing images which are truly unusual. The usage of scanner, traditionally utilized for documents and papers, is instead, used to take selfies, or whatever you call it. Distorted beauty, whereas I believe beauty comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, even with faces pushed against a solid medium, is a beauty of its own. The image represents a person's daring style of promoting aesthetic beauty through their own wilderness. This is my barmecidal remedy, in other words, a remedy towards all the disappointing benefits you can get from being a commercial artist. Yes, I am commercial, but I am far from trying to please everyone and producing images I don't necessarily believe in. So yes, even if I didn't get a camera, I can produce unusual images with an unorthodox method. 

That's what makes the photographic sense, it's not the camera, it's the mind utilizing it. On the upmost, I usually am disappointed by seeing so-called-photographers running around, taking ratchet(not the good kind of ratchet) pictures like they're Mario Testino. With all the fake-lensed models that does the whole model 101, our future in photography requires the mind, not the camera. Go buy a CANON EOS 1D but if you don't have that sense, you're going to make an HD version of your iPhone photographs, not the good VSCOcam types, but the extremely noisy(not intentionally), blurry(not the good kind of motion), and the whole package of an unusual attire. So please, don't blabber around your extremely advanced DSLR when your photographic mind isn't advanced, at all. 

Growing up.

That would be my ultimate “barmecide”. Sadly, it’s more of a realistic approach than being simply, an illusion or an imagination. As we grow up, we get disappointed, a lot, to be honest. You see, people come and go, and then things just start to fall apart. Luckily, apparently the remaining pieces fall back together to form a magnificent mosaic from imperfections, representing our lives. However, there will be a lot of things that linger too close and too deep that will end up being bullshit.

You see, as you grow older, you seek more into the world. Our capabilities is then exceeded onto, you know, the utilization of the human body to the fullest. Our minds to be a medium to perform in the very best way. But eventually, these global situations are just as unstabile as your high school life.

I need something that’s for forever. I try to put a perspective that it would be God and my beliefs that I would cling to.

This world is full of people who just aren’t real enough you know. Hypocrites who vomit their mind, then eat it all up again. People who don’t act the way they speak their mind. People who are just way too superficial to be trusted. That is why living with THAT much lingering to the people you love, or loved, is pretty much a hard thing to do. Because you’ll never ever know how things turn out. Trust is such a big value, at least that’s what validity taught me.

I confess I woke up like this.

Being a complete douchebag is one thing, but being completely unapologetic is another matter. Sometimes you’ve just got to pick yourself up, you know. In fact, quoting Queen B and Gags

'Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it's broken, but you can still see the crack in that mother fucker's reflection.'

Definitely foreshadowing my high school days.

I’m literally just so tired that everything just becomes numb. As dumb as that may sound, that might just be a sign of being strong. Being able to withstand the oddities in life that may arise and fall in it’s own Alaia value, luxurious but with a price to pay.

In fact. Barmecidal Remedy is also about being angry. About losing it. About scanning your whole emotions in metaphorical pieces in it’s eerie and ethereal values, yet also a collision of being tired. It’s like an Azealia Banks record, artsy and angry, yet not emotional. You get it?.

I'm angry. Yet I forgive. I forget. You see. Life is supposed to be like that. To embrace your emotions to the very fullest. To make sacrifices to make things right. But to always put yourself first. You are beautiful, remember that. My ultimate remedy however, is.

To be happy. 

x

Scanography portraits featuring the one and only, Miss Irene Wihandi.