Ghost City 13, Tim Portlock, digital print. 72" x 54"
The Center for Emerging Visual Artists spotlight exhibition season for this year ends with a two-person show featuring Tim Portlock and Jordan Griska. Tim Portlock was introduced by the Director of Career Development Amie Potsic at the opening reception and the artist spoke about his work.
“Wow, this is a lot of people who showed up!”, said Tim Portlock. The gallery was shoulder to shoulder to see the large-scale prints and smaller studies. “I just realized in the last year that I’m no longer a recent transplant to Philadelphia. The reason why I’m saying that is the original impetus for this came out of my move to Philadelphia and the original set of feelings I felt about the city when I moved here. I was very much aware when I first moved here, because I moved around a lot before I settled here, that at some point you have a different conception of the city that you live in over time. One of the first, biggest things that struck me about Philadelphia when I first came here was the number of abandoned and sort of dilapidated buildings in the city and that sort of connects to a lot of other things going on with economy and post-industrialization that I already think a lot about.
Ghost City 13, detail, Tim Portlock, digital print, 72" x 54" @ CFEVA
So, I wanted to make work that makes those things stay more conscious in my mind. Another thing that informs the work is that I’ve had a life long interest, this sounds kind of weird, 19th Century American landscape painting. One of the things that interested me about that particular group of artists was they were the first American art movement that really thought of itself as Americans. In their work they were trying to construct an American identity and present it to the rest of the world. At least, what I think I’m doing with my work is I’m taking conventions from the 19thCentury American Landscape artists and applying them to contemporary subject matter. Now, a little bit about the process, most of my training is as a painter but for a while I took a sort of detour in interactive art making. So, for a couple years I was actually modifying computer games and simulating historical spaces using that technology. And then at some point, I kind of evolved away from that; this work is using some of that same technology.
Ghost City 14, Tim Portlock, digital print, 72" x 54", CFEVA
For a lot of people this work looks photographic, some people can tell immediately that that it’s using computer game technology. It really depends on your experience with that, like when you play a lot of computer games you might see some things that ring true as a computer game. I start off the process by going around my neighborhood and photographing buildings that are either abandoned or foreclosed, you can actually find this information online. I use those images as reference images and then use the technology that I know and recreate these buildings and these spaces using that technology. Now, these spaces don’t actually exist, they’re sort of like an artist’s re-thinking different elements that actually do exist in Philadelphia, you can think of these spaces as Philadelphia-esque. Some people ask me, “Where is that?” Well, it’s based on Philadelphia but it’s not really Philadelphia. And this is actually very consistent with 19th century landscape painting, the Hudson River school of painters took liberties with what they saw, too.”
Tim Portlock’s digital prints on view at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists gallery in the Barclay building on Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, through December 20th, 2011. Read about Jordan Griska on the Side Arts blog.
DoN Brewer, Contributing Writer, SideArts
