Jonathan Barcan

"Tomorrow May Not Be Like Today: 

My current body of work functions as a structural dialogue between two distinct realities, hinged together to form diptychs. By joining Intaglio etching with Cyanotype, I create a visual split between the "carbon-based" biological world and the "data-based" blueprint.

The left panels, rendered in the tactile bite of etching, focus on the undeniable weight of physical existence. Imagery of anatomical hearts, skulls, and silhouetted figures serve as the chaotic artifacts of living and mortality.

In contrast, the right panels utilize Cyanotype - historically used for scientific indexing - to present a world of quantified abstraction. Deep Prussian blue fields contain geometric wireframes, sound waves, and microscopic cross-sections. Text referencing "nodes" and "tokens" floats in these spaces, attempting to convert the organic experience into legible code.

The core of this work lies in the "gutter"-the physical seam where these worlds meet. It asks: what is altered when the organic body is translated into information? In our digital landscape, we constantly oscillate between physical selves and projected images. Titles like 'A Finite Atlas' hint at the limitations of this translation. These diptychs document the tension of trying to locate the human element within our endless signaling grid."