Transient Curated is pleased to present Neckbreaker by Crow, a series of three digital collage works, created in the midst of the artist's recovery from a stroke.
When a human being suffers a stroke, the symptoms can be severe. Even in milder cases, symptoms can include loss of balance, nausea, exhaustion, and vertigo. In the weeks following the stroke, these symptoms can stay, often joined by difficulty moving, and other pain. It was amidst these symptoms that the artist RK Whicker, also known as Crow created the works in Neckbreaker.
The pieces were dictated as much by the artist’s physical limitations in recovery as they were by his creative intent. While Crow’s work is usually a thorough mix of digital and physical processes, apart from the initial scans of source images, the Neckbreaker process was entirely digital. It was easier for the artist to remain in one place, seated at his computer, then to switch between the many printers and scanners in his studio like he was used to.
Because of this difficulty moving, the source images chosen had to count. Crow scanned in a handful of pages from 1980s wrestling magazines, which combined with illustration tutorial pages would make up the bulk of the source material for the project. What followed was a hypnotic process of staring at the screen and manipulating these images in Photoshop, drawing them closer and closer to capturing what he was feeling at the time, even if this was unintentional.
"I didn't set out to make pieces about this, but they ended up being about the strokes anyway."
For this period of days the process of creating Neckbreaker became a refuge. Creating was a familiar state for Crow to return to when everything else felt so different. But the images he was manipulating were anything but comforting. Taken at a range of wrestling events, the source photos showed wrestlers in the midst of matches, covered in blood and grappling each other. For these wrestlers in the images depicted, pain is just a part of the job.
Crow managed to temper these images into something entirely his own, but not completely beyond recognition. The red of the blood remains, a face or hand can be seen, or the chains from a ring-side prop table. On top of this pain and showmanship, Crow made his work, not so much as a means of creating art, but as a means of getting through.
CURATED