Mt4 — GREEN SCREEN: Colby Richardson
TORONTO | From collages to music videos, the multimedia artist fills the holes in his images with multitudes of meanings
WORDS BY JENNIFER BROWNE
ART BY COLBY RICHARDSON & JASON CAWOOD
As a media artist and experimental filmmaker, Colby Richardson has forged a path that defies conventional categorization. Embracing the ubiquity of everyday devices, he imbues them with unexpected purposes and transforms them into artistic instruments. From harnessing the native functions of iPhones in capturing video to unleashing the transformative power of Microsoft PowerPoint, Richardson breathes new life into familiar tools, revealing their hidden artistic potential.
Phomohobes, a captivating exploration of collage and visual composition created in collaboration with Jason Cawood, repurposes pre-1990s commercial imagery abstracted from their collective archives. As he weaves together fragments of the past, these collages become transformative portals, inventing new meanings within the context of contemporary reconsiderations.
The stylistic ethos behind Phomohobes seemingly reverberates throughout Richardson’s work on Feist’s raw and emotional sixth studio album, Multitudes. In mesmerising visual spectacles like the music video for “Hiding Out in the Open”, Richardson’s artistry is on full display. Through the mind-bending usage of green screen gimmickry, he creates a juxtaposition of real and augmented imagery that is akin to living three-dimensional collages. Whether in Phomohobes or in Multitudes, Richardson has a unique ability to harmoniously merge new-age technology with analog techniques. Just as one image warps the meaning of another in his two-dimensional collages, his green screen in Multitudes is the “thin place” where layers of visual meaning congeal together. Raw and spontaneous, the ethic of his aesthetic rejects polished perfection in favour of creative cacophony.
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