Micah Ganske
Yale University School of Art

Look In To My Eyes

Biography: Micah Ganske was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1980. In 2002, he received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a post-baccalaureate certificate from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2003. In 2005, he received his MFA in painting from the Yale School of Art. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Alona Kagan Gallery in New York, NY, the John Fonda Gallery in Baltimore, MD (2003), the Zola/Lieberman Gallery in Chicago, IL (2003), ArtSpot in Atlanta, GA (2003) and Gallery 2 in Chicago, IL (2002).

Objective: As technology in home-entertainment advances, one finds oneself confronted with virtual environments that more and more accurately mirror reality. The idea that we are entertained by these things simply because they are in the format of a “game” is fascinating to me. Eventually we will be able to have perfectly realistic simulations of our day-to-day lives where every second chance can be had by just hitting “restart.” This photographic series is about simulating this eventual simulation by placing the viewer behind my eyes. It is about how the most monotonous activity becomes pure candy when it’s placed at a sufficient level of distance to the spectator.

Tools used: Without Adobe® Photoshop® this project would be impossible. Every element had to be composited separately. One example of this is how a few of the images involve reflection — I had to take separate shots of the hands for the foreground, and a separate long shot of me with my hands in the same gesture to use as the reflection. Layer effects were also key to get the elements to properly blend.