Oz Melo (°1968, Toronto, Canada) creates media artworks, installations, mixed media artworks and conceptual artworks. With a conceptual approach, Melo creates intense personal moments masterfully created by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and round in circles.
His practice provides a useful set of allegorical tools for manoeuvring with a pseudo-minimalist approach in the world of media art: these meticulously planned works resound and resonate with images culled from the fantastical realm of imagination. With the use of appropriated materials which are borrowed from a day-to-day context, he presents everyday objects as well as references to texts, painting and architecture. Pompous writings and Utopian constructivist designs are juxtaposed with trivial objects. Categories are subtly reversed.
His work urge us to renegotiate media art as being part of a reactive or – at times – autistic medium, commenting on oppressing themes in our contemporary society. By applying abstraction, he creates work in which a fascination with the clarity of content and an uncompromising attitude towards conceptual and minimal art can be found. The work is aloof and systematic and a cool and neutral imagery is used.
His works often refers to pop and mass culture. Using written and drawn symbols, a world where light-heartedness rules and where rules are undermined is created. With a subtle minimalistic approach, he tries to approach a wide scale of subjects in a multi-layered way, likes to involve the viewer in a way that is sometimes physical and believes in the idea of function following form in a work.
His works directly respond to the surrounding environment and uses everyday experiences from the artist as a starting point. Often these are framed instances that would go unnoticed in their original context. By using popular themes such as sexuality, family structure and violence, he touches various overlapping themes and strategies. Several reoccurring subject matter can be recognised, such as the relation with popular culture and media, working with repetition, provocation and the investigation of the process of expectations.
His works doesn’t reference recognisable form. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted. By rejecting an objective truth and global cultural narratives, he creates with daily, recognizable elements, an unprecedented situation in which the viewer is confronted with the conditioning of his own perception and has to reconsider his biased position.
He creates situations in which everyday objects are altered or detached from their natural function. By applying specific combinations and certain manipulations, different functions and/or contexts are created.
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