Fish have always fascinated me. Since childhood in New York, they mesmerized me in the markets lying on ice with their cold stare, emotionless and hypnotic. Teenage years at the Jersey shore drew me to the docks in the late afternoons when the boats returned to proudly display their dumped catches for all of us to see. Their eyes all had the same look despite heir size or species, as though they had all witnessed the same things no matter where they came from.
Catholic school brought me into a world of icons and accepted unknowns, dark religious representations and events fulfilling man’s need to bring the spiritual down to the physical plane for a better understanding of Him, entangling himself with the very objects and ceremonies men create as aides and language, becoming more involved with the entanglement itself, than its reason for being.
We live in a world of symbols, a universal language that is taking precedence in our “ click here “ remote surfing society, who is becoming used to and driven by fast output and soon forgotten data. We are in an image driven world, were cash registers, machines and signs have symbols instead of words. Some of them take a life on their own. “ N “ in today’s media represent more than just the letter and takes on a power of its own despite its original intention. Lifeless two dimension images have become angels or monsters taking their place in our societies affecting how we see things and how we judge them.
We are witnesses to these transformations and are affected by them. We try to find a place in tomorrow’s tide while struggling against today’s current. In the end we too are dumped on the world’s dock wide-eyed like fish for others to see
In a wordless world, fish become my icons of man, his soul, witnessing his perceptions of spirit, his struggle with the life he creates and the objects he empowers.
Matthew Pace
