Muted

Browsing through Aaron's collection feels like I'm flipping through the archival records of rare flora in the Natural History Musuem in London. The infinite black background constrains the perception of depth to the singular stem. Each flower is captured on a flatbed scanner designed for photographs in a technique called 'scanography' thus making Aaron a first-rate artistic scanographer.

"MUTED employs a minimalist approach to explore themes of isolation, mortality and perception, while shifting our attention inwards to the self. It references my own colour vision deficiency and plays on differing perceptions between myself and others." Aaron Ferguson.

The flatbed layer of light documents in pixels what the computer is 'seeing' in millions of pixels. These pixels together form an image many times higher in resolution than what might be possible through a DSLR camera.

"Each image in the project takes 20 or more hours to create and edit, and the original high-resolution files are several gigabytes and hundreds of millions of pixels in size. This is so that I am able to create very large prints of the work."

While the Pin Cushion NFT may be sold, you can buy limited edition prints directly from Aaron in a 11" x 14" format.

It does feel like these are the kind of flowers are to be appreciated one stem at a time. Each one is preserved in isolation, it's vivid life of color drained away leaving a dulled version of its cut flower truth. The dried flower is more delicate now too. MUTED is a conversation Aaron is having with us, about what he sees and is asking you to engage with him and share what you see.

Beyond the garden on the ceiling, there's another well curated collection titled GM found by roaming streets about to undergo reconstruction. There are some similarities in artistic practice with the MUTED series. In both, the artist is arranging and scanning an organic form already created. In MUTED, the garden grew the flower stem and in GM the construction worker waved the spraycan to create the gm gestures, for an entirely different task.

What we get to experience is how Aaron has composed each subtle variation within the theme. NFT Twitter goes crazy for gm and I wish one of these beauties had been within the 0.1 eth budget when I curated the 6529 gm gallery. It's a centrepiece of the gm movement because of the September 30th 2021 mint timing, perhaps somewhere near the height of 'JPEG Summer.'

"One morning, I decided to load my 35mm camera with film and go for a walk to the café. Along the way I witnessed myself and others becoming frustrated by the disruption. As I stood watching the workers for a few moments, I noticed that gas line markings were spray-painted onto the ground.

It suddenly dawned on me. Why am I allowing myself to be upset by things outside of my control? If I always search for negative things in life, I will surely find them. However, the positive sides are there to be discovered by me each day as well."

Aaron is a super-active participant of NFT Twitter for the art, for the community and for the education. Go give him a follow at @aaronrferguson.

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