ARTIST PROFILE

Zachary Dean Norman

  • United States (b. 1985 in Marshall, michigan)
  • Currently in Chicago, Illinois, United States.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Exotic Matter
2014

In physics, the term “exotic matter” is typically applied to matter whose existence is hypothetical or about which little is known. In this work, I have generated my own hypothetical matter; the exoticism of which is completely dependent upon its visual representation. The phenomena and matter represented in these images do not and have never physically existed. They can be seen but not touched. 

This exploration is a response to a world in which a network of machines and digital interfaces dictate human perception and behavior. Given these conditions, the contemporary image and the objects represented therein have become unbound from their physicality. They have become malleable and susceptible to multiple interpretations and intentions. Thus, images and objects can be rendered exotic, in that the matter from which they are composed can be manipulated and represented in ways that deviate from expectations of how they should behave. These images were generated through various photographic and non-photographic techniques to exploit the vulnerability of the image-object relationship; the tenuousness of which reflects the relationships between non-existence and existence; ideation and materialization; space and time. 


BIOGRAPHY

Zachary Norman is a visual artist currently living in Bloomington, IN. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Kalamazoo College and a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Photography from Indiana University. He has also studied at the University of Nairobi in Nairobi, Kenya and the Kyoto University of Art & Design in Kyoto, Japan. In 2014 he was the co-recipient of a New Frontiers Grant awarded for his research on the subject of plenoptics photography with Dr. Andrew Lumsdaine, Prof. Jeffrey Wolin and Georgi Chenov of Indiana University. Norman's work has been exhibited and published nationally and internationally. He is the co-founder of the Everything Is Collective and the quarterly publication, DELIBERATE OPERATIONS