Marc Prats

My practice explores the consequences of social media and mobile devices upon our cognition. I see my works as post-digital representations of the human mind unfolding into a series narratives, which straddle the digital and analogue to discuss my generation’s experience with ubiquitous devices. 

Those born before the 2000s entered a world that was free from widespread Internet, but this changed dramatically in just two decades. Many of us were forced to adapt to this development and can now easily navigate new media, yet we still remember simpler times with a certain nostalgia. It is perhaps this longing for the analogue that makes us more susceptible to psychological conditions associated with prolonged screen use. Such tensions, combined with the fact that I was born with a sight-threatening condition, which was worsened by exposure to screens during my upbringing, led me to want to explore how digital technologies mediate our lives and how their effects can be counteracted with art. 

Many facets of the Internet, social media included, are designed to be appealing, enthralling, even addictive. They are made to capture our attention for as long as possible by presenting as much content as possible, leaving us no time to actually think about what we are taking in. My paintings and sculptural objects aim to subvert these mechanisms from within. They do so by captivating my viewers with the beauty and detail of the digital aesthetics I employ as well as by the ambiguous digital narratives that my work deals with, so that the consumption of the technological is slowed down and imbued with new, more profound meanings.