Work by Gabriel Ramos

My current body of work portrays small-scale structures constructed out of layered paper details based on nostalgia about my life in Puerto Rico. In the creation of each photograph I am a scavenger and an editor of light, composition, form, and color within the constructed environment. Delicacy and the frailty of the materials foreground the passage of time through the instability of the medium I use to create my sets. The inspiration for these constructions is drawn from my childhood memories. Even though the constructions are inspired solely by childhood memories, unconsciously through the process recent memories and moments of my everyday life get integrated into the composition. As a result of the conflated memories within the constructed image, I create an imaginary space both within and beyond the photograph.

The concepts of fragility, the ephemeral quality of a home, and memory are important factors in my process as well as in my artwork. By using my recollection, the overall composition for the constructions becomes more abstracted and imprecise. In conjunction with the photographic works, the video pieces portray the distortion of memory visually by deconstructing the composition and reconstructing it again. In a sense, the act of forgetting and remembering is depicted in the video works by showing the deconstruction and reconstruction in a constant loop. My work also foregrounds the ephemerality of memory through the destruction of the work, from which only the photograph survives.

Gabriel Ramos