Our Spotlight Solo Artist for the month of October 2022 is New York artist Harris Diamant with an exhibition titled Headonics.
“My working process has led me to incorporate a wide range of techniques into my work including woodcarving, silver soldering, lathe-turning, brazing, welding and gold leafing. The design aspects of my work are largely preconscious and automatistic. I begin work on a new piece or series of pieces with the understanding that the work at hand will lead where it will lead.
Over the years I have become more and more interested in vision, particularly in terms of how my pieces may reflect, refract, and distort light. Many of the materials I use either reflect light naturally or can be finished to do so in a variety of ways. I can then alter these elements by using spherical and strategically curved surfaces, optical lenses and mirrors. In many cases the interplay of light captures and distorts the reflection of the viewer.
The interest in the play of light dovetails with my curiosity and affinity for symbols, objects and accessories related to vision. Optometric apparatuses appear in my work and call attention to sight—and insight—in more than just the physical or literal sense. Introspection, self-knowledge, dreaming and glimpses into metaphysical and spiritual realms all fuel my working process, and are indeed manifested in the finished works.
I hope that my works will affect viewers on multiple levels—visceral, emotional, intellectual—and that one may infer any number of personal meanings. My decision to concentrate on heads is motivated by the awareness that they embody both subject and object. They contain a universe and they engender and circumscribe simultaneously the content of my artistic pursuit.
Slete Gallery in LA had been representing me since 2005. The Covid pandemic caused the gallery to change their format in 2020 and their representation ended.
For numerous reasons, foremost of which was a need to reinvent, challenge and refresh myself, I have devoted myself exclusively to the practice of painting for the past 2 1/2 years.”
-Harris Diamant
