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Artist Name: Alex La Grotta
Title: Untitled
Medium: Digital rendering
Year: 2020
Artist Statement:
I am fascinated by detail and its innate ability to be dominant and undetectable simultaneously. I find myself obsessing over the networks of details that intertwine to make up the whole, and wonder how they can be so easily overlooked by others. The grand scheme of anything does not just come to be; it is made of countless layers of tiny parts. I wanted to dissect a large scale problem and find it's smallest sign of existence. Pollution, an unignorably large issue, can be seen in its largest manifestations: oil spills, factory fumes, littered oceans and so on. I was interested in looking at pollution's smaller manifestations that often go unseen: mercury deposits in the tissue of fish caused by dumping dangerous metals and chemicals into the ocean.
Image reference: The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences https://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/jnp.2008.20.4.iv; the original is a photo of mercury exposure in brain tissue.