Wire*— Artlink Inc., in partnership with the Artlink Artist Council, announces the art exhibition Hello, Sunshine produced by the second grant recipient of The Artist Forward Fund, Daniel Mariotti. Hello, Sunshine is hosted by Arizona Center, 455 N. 3rd St., Ste. 1007, and will be open to the public 6 to 10 p.m. on First Friday, Dec. 7. It will also be open 4 to 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 8 and 12 to 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 9, coinciding with the Grapes on the Grotto wine festival.
Daniel Mariotti
Daniel Mariotti’s new photographic series explores how perception is affected by emotional and metaphysical masses that operate like gravity. Hello, Sunshine draws from Einstein’s theory of relativity and explores the specific gravity of depression. In space-time, objects that travel through the fabric of the universe are warped, bent and twisted by the masses and motions of the other objects within it; similarly, Mariotti describes the mass of depression as one that obscures his focus and gradually changes the way he experiences the world. For the installation, Mariotti created 30 photographs over 30 days of journaling to capture the pull and fluctuations of this chronic disease.
“May 21” by Daniel Mariotti
“Even on my best days, where the world appears most vivid and colorful, depression is ever-present, a force physically seen in each picture. Depression is visually mimicked by altering the camera; poking holes into the shutter creates the fog seen in the images, a fog that contracts and grows at the mercy of space-time.” Mariotti continues, “It wasn’t until adolescence that I realized not everyone was moving through this, sometimes thick, fog. It wasn’t until much later I found words and images to help bridge the gap between my experience and how others live their lives.”
A series of poems accompany Mariotti’s images to represent a broader spectrum of time. They offer observers another entry to the work in an attempt to make what is an ethereal, enduring experience more concrete, tangible, and most importantly human.
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