Melissa Ulto

…unMade Movie… @ http://www.thecataract.com

<<  an online digital photography and video exhibit is an exploration of subculture sexuality, as depicted by b-movies and pulp fiction, mixed with cyber culture  >>

bio:

Melissa Ulto is an interdisciplinary artist who utilizes modern and traditional mediums to create her works. Born in Los Angeles, she grew up in various cities and towns in Northern Ontario, with summer vacations spent with extended family in New York. Artistically inclined from a very early age, her skill grew under several private teachers and her own obsessive creative investigations. Attending college briefly, Melissa moved to New York in 1991. She began integrating her computer skills with her creative skills and launched her first online exhibit in 1994.

Continuing her education, she found her multimedia and fine art professors interested in her work while at the same time unable to recommend a method of showing her pieces, which often involved computers, video, paintings, photography and assemblage. Melissa found the web to be ideal in creating a time/space that engages the audience in both moving and still imagery presentations.

She currently resides in New York, working professionally as a Digital Video Specialist at Columbia University, and continues to pursue her work with her online exhibit, ...unMade Movie... She recently showed her work at AugustArt 2001, in New York, as part of a group show of upcoming artists. Her work has gained international attention, and will be featured in several online galleries.

From the Artist:

My work makes people uncomfortable in all kinds of ways - it arouses sexually and intellectually, confuses with the many faces, confounds with the obscured images, teases and confronts with image and text. The site is a backdoor access into intellectual and erotic discussion. That really frightens many people...makes them lose their bearings...questions the idea that sex is separate from intellect...that women can own their own iconography and objectification and in doing so expose deeper and more erotic truths...and there is the underlying darkness to my work, which represents the lack of clarity in subconscious imagery - the mind dreams in darkness and the far corners are the places where images are half-lit, murky in the undertow of emotions and random thoughts...visual non-sequitors that are half-seen - to terrify, exalt, and inspire. Images follow from darkness to daylight, possessing a dreamlike quality, the fog of sleep lifting as if the half-glimpsed visions of dreaming have followed us from night into day.

When the image is spoon fed, the idea is dictated to the audience, the inspiration and motivation for true interaction with the piece is destroyed. Humans desire puzzles - visual, verbal, word and thought puzzles. My work offers a trip down the rabbit hole with no explanation, no linear narrative, no guideposts, maps or standard methodologies. I think art is escapism at its best - good art requires a leap in faith and trip to the subconscious that will connect imagination and emotion. The puzzle is not meant to be solved but to be experienced singularly by each person viewing the work.

creative philosophy:

the internet has introduced the idea of virtual space and time to millions of users - i want to be in the center of that virtuality, creating within that space and bringing it into physical reality, blurring the lines of subconscious, shared and changeable states of being

artist’s statemtent:

Melissa Ulto creates with the human form, using self-portraiture in digital still and moving images, exploring sexuality, subculture iconography and technology.  Her work draws from vintage and cyber culture influences, embracing the gritty and sometimes pixelated nature of her media.  Multimedia is a key aspect to Melissa's interdisciplinary artistic philosophy, allowing a full examination of an idea in stills, movies, sounds, animation and traditional fine art.

In ...unMade Movie..., Melissa is examining the roles of subcultural female sexuality - how little it has changed from the b-movies and pulp fiction of the mid-twentieth century and how it is echoed in her ideas of sexuality.  In this piece, Melissa presents each role as a separate persona, mixing identity with iconography. She is also examining the subtext of the moving image - what happens when you slow it down, examine the frames that pass into our cultural subconscious.  The streamed media and flash animation reflect the ambient quality of the still images.

www.thecataract.com