Contemporary American artist Jason Salavon (b. 1970) has been preaching for years that reconfiguring data can result in amazing art – and I have to agree. Using his proprietary software, he merges masses of data that share a common theme and masterfully extracts a beautiful visual of the shared elements in form, texture, color and pattern.

One Week Skin (HBO) of 2012 (above) is the result of sourcing and abstracting one week of HBO television programming at 15 frames per second and rearranging the information into colorful geometric pockets of visual information.

The spooky Portrait (van Dyck) of 2010 is the result of using high-quality reproductions of the bulk of the Master’s paintings, overlaying them and producing and average amalgamation of his portraits in terms of color and forms.

In The Top Grossing Film of All Time of 2000, Salavon took all 350,000 frames of the movie Titanic and reduced them to a block of color most represented by each frame. The narrative of the movie was kept, so you can imagine Leonardo DiCaprio playing “king of the world” in the light blue horizontal strip towards the top and the sinking of the ship represented by the horizontal dark hues towards the bottom.

In his Baroque Painting of 2010, he samples and reformats the colors taken from the paintings of Sir Peter Paul Rubens to derive the palette most representational in Rubens’ paintings. Each line width is proportional to color frequency and its position in the square is based on color saturation.  The purpose of ordering it by saturation is to bring depth to a rigid geometric work.

Had someone told me about Jason’s art without the reference of a visual, I would have chalked it to a juvenile science project.  But the art is frankly stunning with serious depth and technical mastery.  There is nothing sophomoric about it. This is probably why he’s been named one of the 50 most collectible contemporary artists under 50 by Art & Auction Magazine.  Glad I have my finger on the pulse and now … you do too!

richard rabel
principal
richard rabel: interiors + art
interior design and art advising
new york city

image credits: Jason Salavon, Chicago.  He is represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York; Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles; and Kusseneers Gallery, Antwerp amongst others.