Ariel Mioduser

"Static noise" – an exhibition of self portraits by Ariel Mioduser made of digital painting and electroacoustic sound. The visual raw material is the pixel, that single point of light presented without any disguise, which does not pretend to look as other media such as a brush stroke or charcoal - but is the thing itself. The raw material of the sound is largely based on the voice of Mioduser, processed to a point where it is sometimes unrecognizable as a human voice, but still carries the warmth and vibration of the original.

The color in the works gives them an expressive and stormy character, which contrasts with the conventional image of coldness and alienation usually attributed to the digital language.

Mioduser says of himself and his work: "I am a laborious artist. I create a load… I work on every pixel in a painting and then magnify it so that it and its qualities get noticed… My paintings are not quiet, regardless of their subject… The sound is airwaves, it is a journey of discovery and pleasure… Both painting and sound have a starting point, but the end result is not clear to me in advance… I hear the works while painting and see them while composing. They reflect the frenzy within me, the restlessness."

The subjects of the works deal with dreams, fantasies, cultural references and introspection, and they present many faces of the artist depending on the time and mood in which they were created.

The work "Icarus" brings together the artist and the mythological figure as he flies towards the sun, and his insistence on continuing in his journey despite the knowledge that it will cost his life causes astonishment in him.

The work "Red Eyes" draws inspiration from the work of video artist Bill Viola "Observance" which focuses on a very human view of that emotion of horror from an occurrence that is unknown to the viewer.

In the work "Online Presence", which refers to the expression that quantifies the degree of our presence in the virtual space, Ariel invests hard labor in the drawing of each and every pixel, in a reversal of concepts such as efficiency and mechanicality attributed to the digital environment. The result makes it possible to observe and feel each pixel, not just as part of a whole image, in a way that is not possible in everyday experience.

Looking at the paintings and listening to the sounds evolve into a new experience: the static painting begins to move in front of our eyes and merges into it the dimension of time. While listening, the eyes walk over it and discover more and more details that connect to the happenings in the sound. The sound itself – sometimes abstract, sometimes a melody or structure that can be grasped, sometimes builds tension and sometimes relaxes. Together with the visual image it allows the viewer to disconnect from the environment for a few moments and float in an enveloping and multi-sensory experience.