Singular Vision from the Digital Collective Unconscious
by Nikki Oder
Originally published in Issue 07 of Manor House Quarterly: MYTH.
The stuff of James Roper’s art is in itself nothing new, referencing art history, religious iconography, and pop culture. Nevertheless, his creations are often imbued with a deep resonance through the fusion of disparate imagery and resulting associations that reverberate in the collective unconscious. Roper presents exaggerated and fascinating forms that transport us momentarily from the mundane to the extraordinary.
Although working from the confines of his often chilly studio in Manchester, England, Roper draws on global sources for his compositions, taking full advantage of the vast array of images available on the Internet. He conducts innumerable searches out of a ferocious desire to see the extent of humanity’s visual complexity and expression. Roper recognizes that his existence in this digital age is an important factor to his output as an artist. He states, “I probably see as many images in a week as Picasso saw in his entire lifetime.” Had he been born in an earlier era, he simply could not produce the forms he makes today.
Roper often uses traditional 2-dimensional media such as acrylic on canvas or pencil on paper, but his work demands to be seen as embodying monumental and dynamic forces. Flesh bulges and guts spill as the visceral explodes and blends into the empyreal beyond. The characters and environments inferred from Roper’s compositions exist outside reality in a mesmerizing, hyper-real expanse, so recognizable as to be nearly tangible, and yet distant and unmistakably separate from our earthly existence.
The imagery in Roper’s work seldom resolves itself into a cohesive unit. The fluid dynamism of distinct elements draws the eye, yet the composition overstimulates the visual faculties and barely allows a second of rest. Nevertheless, it is possible to find meaning by assembling the fragments into a more comprehensive whole. This act of creating personal meaning from the varied imagery of Roper’s creations often allows an unconscious connection, conducting a search through a vast database of mental imagery, far surpassing that of any earlier generation. Roper’s work attempts to tap into the reservoir of associations hidden deep within our psyche.
Despite their identifiable components, Roper’s pieces lack realism in the traditional sense. Colors are often intensely vivid and saturated, and textures appear polished to an unnaturally glossy finish. Forms are distorted, specifically those that suggest biological elements such as guts, muscles, sinews, and tightly stretched flesh. Roper aims to evoke an intense physical and mental response out of the viewer. He has been profoundly affected by the peak shift principle of neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachadran, who claims that humans and animals often respond more strongly to exaggerated distortions of recognizable imagery. In accord with this premise, Roper captures the essence of discernible forms and amplifies the qualities that make them unique and distinguishable from ordinary visual imagery.
In the course of any given day, viewers encounter varied and disparate images from television programs, advertising, Internet searches, and print media. An overwhelming visual spectacle often goes unrecognized. Roper combats the visual fatigue that results from this assault and sustains the viewer’s attention by means of exaggeration and distortion.
In the Rapture series, Roper features svelte models pulling away skimpy bikini tops. Where breasts should be exposed, colorful, nebulous, dynamic forms burst forth, obscuring each model’s face. In these drawings the figures derive from Internet imagery of porn stars, whose bodies are sometimes artificial distortions of the natural human form. This imagery is arresting not because of the bodies of the porn stars, but because of the explosion of vitality and energy emanating from torsos ripped open, exposing the elemental forms within. In his essay Peakshift to Paroxysm, Roper explains the series as “the shedding of carnal bodies giving way to an abstract purity beneath.”
The tearing movement enacted by the figures of the Rapture series is reminiscent of a signature move by Clark Kent, a celebrated character from American pulp mythos. Upon ripping off his business suit, Clark Kent exposes the bold, emblazoned “S” on the chest of his crime-fighting suit, evidencing his duality as both an everyday working man and a superhero. The association between Rapture and Superman is intentional, an attempt to use art to encourage what Roper considers “becoming something more than you think you are.”
Concepts such as that of the all-saving hero have been deeply burned into what Carl Jung conceived as “The Collective Unconscious.” Jung, founder of analytical psychology, discovered patterns in myth, fantasy, and dream, and from them derived the concept of archetypes, often sensed in a construct removed from reality. In trying to understand why Roper’s output elicits such a visceral reaction despite its polished stylistic harmony, it is tempting to consider that his use of divergent and incongruous source material offers meaning on both a conscious and unconscious level, reconciling disparate imagery through inherent archetypal associations.
In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell wrote, “The role of the artist I now understand as that of revealing through surfaces the implicit forms of the soul, and the great agent to assist the artist was the myth.” Roper’s compositions, utilizing the vast troves of images available on the Internet, are informed by the archetypes he senses in what he refers to as the digital collective unconscious. In discussing archetypes, Roper quips: “You can’t get away from them – it’s how our brains are wired.”
In selecting images and manipulating surface qualities, Roper is not so much in search of beauty as in aspects of the human psyche. He refers to his compositions as forms of self-portraiture, the result of filtering through vast troves of digital imagery to select the elements that have personal meaning and yet reflect the diversity and shared commonalities of human experience and expression. He sources images on the Internet, which he refers to as his “2nd brain,” aligning with theories of a future in which humanity and technology continue their immutable progression, toward the further development of a digital collective unconscious.
Roper is often praised for his extreme technical skill and craftsmanship, and yet it is important to appreciate the depth and richness of his output. Despite its glossy, high-saturated, and refined surface beauty, Roper’s work should not be dismissed as superficial. Roper certainly is fascinated by the outer layer, but he explores the external to connect to that which is deeply rooted in the collective unconscious and unites humanity. Roper values both artistic and physical beauty, recognizing its ingenuity and the richness that can lie under the surface. In referencing Greek statues and airbrushed models, Roper comments, “Just because something on the surface looks like it doesn’t have any depth to it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have some kind of validity to it.” Roper’s work, like an ideal statue of Aphrodite, an elegant painting of the Madonna, or a heart wrenching production of Romeo and Juliet, elicits a response in viewers not only for its beauty of form, but more so for the deep associations that allow the characters and concepts to become universally relatable, meaningful, and uniting.
