The anonymity that people can retain in the digital world has given them courage to express themselves in a way that they would not have dared in real life. “The keyboard warriors”, as they call it, are those who make judgmental statements online, claiming on what they feel to be justice and righteousness. This has doubtlessly created interesting pools of dialogue, but it has also, inevitably, caused people to go hyperactive in the sharing of taboos, particularly, on the sharing of sexual materials which are provocative and at times outrageous to look at.
But as I see it, the truth always resides in the perspective of the perceiver, and artist Dan Gluibizzi has perceived such information as his gold mine. By taking full advantage of these pools, he has transformed them into his source of inspiration. Based in Portland, Gluibizzi is obsessed with Tumblr. As he told Juxtapoz, he sees these Tumblr users as being “wonderfully obsessive”, as they “meticulously organize digital scrapbooks of their favorite sub-genres of pornography. Many offer the widest range of poses and body types I have ever found.” This has allowed him to fully utilize the information age, and at the same time, exercise his analog creativity.
The reason why his works are not as challenging to look at as their sources might be, is not only because he renders them in a transparent-like texture, but also because he extracts these figures from their contextual forms, shifting them into pure subjects instead. He further enhances these images with intriguing colors in pastel. Even though some of the figures that he depicts are really interacting in “animalistic acts”, the details that he includes attract viewers, just like the sweet juices from a piece of bubble gum. His works allow people to visually ‘chew’ on them for a very long time, so that these lifeless depictions are given with more than just the connotations of promiscuity and physical desires.