Filicide
About
Filicide is the body of work and web hole for Florida-based graphic designer and web developer Alexander Henken. As of 2008, I am preparing to graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in graphic design at the Florida State University.
My interest and involvement in graphic design dates back to the birth of HTML4-era websites. I adopted a bare bones approach early on, literally creating websites from the ground up. My familiarity with primarily web based languages served as a primer in experimenting with syntactically similar languages such as Java, C++, and UNIX in my ongoing exploration of computer science.
Although my interests are rooted primarily in new media, my work and style are by no means devoid of traditional influence. On the contrary; I enjoy converging illustration, photography, typography, and design into mixed media artworks.
My artwork addresses themes that are unseen, repressed, discarded, or any combination thereof. The dual nature of the human condition presents a complex web of uncertanties. I reference the human psyche, in both its strengths and weaknesses, in the art that I create. One's view of "reality" tends to vary in the extreme and is often obscured by willful ignorance, disinformation, and complacency within the cogs of modern consumer culture. It is my aim to bring the suppressed and subconscious to the forefront as an artist and designer working in mixed digital and traditional media.
I am often fueled creatively by kitsch culture and the human disposition to consume. Ephemeral things, however impermanent or meaningless they may be, play an instrumental role in shaping anyone's life including my own. I bend the rules of what constitutes ephemera in my artwork by using old media as a means of commentary on media today where fear and consumption are pedaled more than ever before. Media constantly reminds us of our vulnerabilities as human beings and offers no shortage of ways to "fix" them -- if only temporarily. I wish to provoke the embrace of our imperfections rather than self-distraction by way of meaningless structure and mindless consumption.