Apophenia
The face of Jesus has been seen in the most unlikely places -on the side of prison buildings, on a telephone pole, on the underside of a waffle. Most people would chalk these sightings off as "pareidolia", the hardwired human proclivity to see human faces in almost anything. And yet when we look at Jesus on the tortilla there is some part of us that is reluctant to undo the image that seems before us. It sure LOOKS like Jesus.
This strange conflict is the essence of Jim Ianonne's work, Apophenia. Jim has realized that just because we understand something, it doesn't make it lose it's power. Whether ancient or contemporary, scientific or religious, we are all still asking the same basic questions about life and death, why we are here, what we are made of.
The title of this show, Apophenia, is a term used to describe our human ability to see meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. (Pareidolia is a type of apophenia.) Jim is genuinely intrigued by this phenomenon and the peculiar psuedo sciences that it spawns, (everything from ghost hunting to numerology.) Jim is an adament man of science, except in the odd moments when he isn't. For some reason he can not completely turn his back on that "something else" that is less than perfectly rational. And what is that something else? Jim refers to it as spirituality.
This conflict is at the heart of Apophenia and informs the way Jim has executed his work. Beginning at "the beginning," he chooses an old engraved image and traces it on paper. The images depict ancient views of the cosmos and man, including such subject matter as early astronomical images, human and animal skeletons and anatomy. Then he layers this underimage with more rational, contemporary iconography - scientific renderings, up to date medical images of anatomical systems, geological strata. Using a host of complimentary materials, (pencils, watercolor, acrylic paint, pastels, silver leaf,) he blends the images together and tries to unite the duality of these conflicting ways of thinking.
"An intersting outgrowth of Jim's quest is his attempt to understand how we relate to our own subjective experience. As a scientifically oriented person he recounted how he could take a walk in the woods and find himself "identifying" what he was seeing. But he wonderered, is a waterfall necessarily more satisfying to look at if one is busy naming it's geological underpinnings? Jim said, "Painting for me is a kind of projection and a way of saying, "let's look at the beauty." " Perhaps this is the "something else" that he is looking for."
Esther Solondz
All works in this series are mixed media on Arches paper 22 X 30 in. 2012