Fresh Milk is thrilled to announce that, after reviewing a number of fantastic submissions to our open call for this year’s Fresh Milk ArtBoard and having input from an advisory group of creative professionals around the region, our team has selected an image by Saint-Martin born, Martinique based artist David Gumbs to be displayed. Congratulations, David!

David Gumbs, Offscreen (still image from interactive video piece) on the Fresh Milk ArtBoard

Artist statement:

David Gumbs is a multimedia artist from the island of Saint-Martin. His research investigates the spectator’s perception and mental landscape.

David Gumbs’ artistic approach is based on a famous quotation from XVIIth century French philosopher and chemist Antoine Lavoisier: « Mass is neither gained nor lost, merely transformed ». Thus, life’s cycle, infinite scale, memory, and the Sacred, are themes that emerge from larger topics of interest such as inner/outer landscape, and offscreen. These immersed spaces reveal personal inner projections from the unconscious, thus emerging this « Mental Archeology » through spectator’s perception. His research focuses on the different feelings, emotions, and stimulations that build memory.

Discovering the Martinican and Cuban flora triggered a vivid passion for mythical forest Gods in island cultures. This was the beginning of an identity quest through the exploration of topics dealing with the offscreen of perception, and rhizome graphical macroscopic universes.

His polymorphic art reveals the interbreeding and hybridization process in the collective and individual unconsciousness in Caribbean imagination.

The presented works are from the Offscreen and the Blossoms realtime interactive and generative video series. These images are created in realtime by using fractal data and user intervention that creates and transforms the patterns on the fly. The Blossoms series was created during David’s Davidoff Art Initiative Beijing residency in 2016, where tropical flora was used as a metaphor of air purification while the random animated patterns were growing and expanding on the city walls.

About the artist:

The Blossoms interactive installation was invited to be shown as part of the Special Projects of the Jamaica Biennial 2017. The « Water & Dreams » video was selected for the Relational Undercurrents exhibition at MOLAA, and was also shown at the Digital exhibition at the National Gallery of Jamaica.

In 2016, David Gumbs was selected as the Davidoff Art Initiative artist in residence in Beijing China, where he exhibited at the World Art Museum / China Millenium Monument, and Aotu Studio independent art space.

His « Offscreen of Perception » videos have been shown at Video Islands in New York, the opening exhibition of the Memorial Acte Museum (Macte) in Guadeloupe and Transoceanic Visual Exchange (TVE) in Barbados in 2015; at the trinidad + tobago film festival – New Media, Transforming Spaces – Bahamas and the Beep Bop Boop New Media Festival – Florida in 2014; at the BIAC Biennal – Martinique and Art Bémao New media selection – Guadeloupe in 2013; at Happy Island Project Biennal – Aruba in 2012; and at the prestigious Latitudes, Paris City Hall in 2009.

He has taking part in numerous new media festivals in Europe and in France, for example the Aborescence Festival in Aix-en-Provence. David’s work is regularly shown all over the world and in the Caribbean.

(L-R) Shanice Smith & Dominique Hunter, For your Viewing Pleasure, 2017; Leasho Johnson, How to kill a soundboy, 2017; Oneika Russell, A bit of what you fancy, Detail of a still from the video, 2017

Fresh Milk would also like to announce that three pieces were selected as runners-up for this edition: For your Viewing Pleasure by Shanice Smith (Trinidad) and Dominique Hunter (Guyana); How to kill a soundboy by Leasho Johnson (Jamaica); and A bit of what you fancy by Oneika Russell (Jamaica). These pieces are featured in our small exhibition Resonance, which continues from August 28-31, 2017 in the Fresh Milk studio.

Finally, to take a look at all of the other submissions we received, check out our online exhibition of the work, celebrating the positive response we received to this call. We are so pleased to be able to share work from around the Caribbean, especially as Barbados is the host of this year’s CARIFESTA XIII festival, and encourage you to come see all of the works in person!