Freestyle Academy proudly presents

Reflective Society: A Junior Experimental Project by Adam Poltorak (2013)

I am exploring the feeling of despair when I imagine the world controlled by an deranged leader. I envisioned a corrupt leader, whose face is made from torn pieces each a different color. His face genuinely evil and disturbing. He wears a suit and tie, formally dressed, mocking the political control that once prospered the city, but his suit is distorted in texture, worn by the wrong man. The dark shapes of the abstract city can apply to anywhere. The man stands tall above the city behind him. The side to his left lies as a shadow of the old society, a time lapse of a magnesium flame makes out the blazing sun that glows with a navy blue color, similar to that of the tops of the mountains spread across the front of the picture. The people of the city transform into perverse entities where filth will inhabit their lives. A magnesium flame, once the sun, diminishes in the city to the man’s right. A reflection of the once healthy city that now stands distorted, blurry and in chaos. The sun lays on the reflects city’s ground burning, striving to survive after being destroyed by the harmful pollution the cruel leader brought upon his city. Even though the leader has had things his way. He vanishes step by step, deranged and hopeless, the strength of true leadership is absent. His new body of non substantiality, separated by the natural causes of death. He disintegrates into the very city he visualized and created. His lost soul deteriorates into the blue and black hues of the mountain landscape far out from the city. The city lives in despair, hopelessly lost and encompassed by misery. The decision of one man has changed the future of a city that will soon fade into non existence. The mountains contradict my despair, as it represents my confidence in finding peace in nature when all hope is lost. Mountains will always pierce high through the clouds, high over the small cities, miles away, yet appearing so close to the human eye.

The technical process was quite a challenge for me. I had to use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. The process of burning magnesium was difficult. I had to take a video of the fire reaction and then go into Adobe Premiere and take a snapshot of six chronological images of the phenomenon taking place. I combined them in an orderly fashion in Photoshop to create a look of bright, unusual fire. I imported into my project canvas as a smart object and edited the brightness to give it the contrast of a sun. Converting my drawn images in illustrator to smart objects allowed me to make changes to each portion of the picture. I imagined the abstract shape of a mountain with a soft textured, fiery glow with a three dimensional effect. Creating the face of the man was a great experience. I drew an outline of a head including the ears. Then I used the pen tool in Illustrator to create shapes to my own liking. I drew randomly and as strangely as I possible. I realized that a nose and mouth and eye structure started to form. I was surprised by the result. My only concern for my experimental piece was how dark the mountains and shadow of the city printed out since the dark colors printed darker. Also the size ratio is smaller than I expected to print. Otherwise I deeply enjoyed the result of my experimental picture.
Visitors 7