Retroglyphs 2022 - Present
“The material program of Olivant’s Retroglyphs invites us to use the descriptive term palimpsest, which means layered accumulation of incidents manifesting over time, but it can also refer to a peeling back of those layers for the sake of parsing their specifics, oftentimes revealing an uncanny reemergence of repressed memories and associations, whether they be of a personal or historical nature. It slowly dawns on the viewer that the what of these works and the how they are made both mirror and editorialize on each other, all the while bearing witness to the consequences of a social world on the verge of amusing itself to death, struggling to fully apprehend the consequences of its translation of myopia into zeitgeist. ”
The Retroglyphs are all derived from the Heteroglyphs and are named for looking back at them. All of these are worked over the top of digital photographs of Heteroglyphs, printed on handmade paper. In addition to printer-ink they typically include collage, colored pencil and acrylic paint. Some Retroglyphs include fragments of Serigraphy and some largely consist of a Serigraph derived from the digital photographs.