LUKE BONADONNA
About home_was_here
This body of work explores how digital storage relates to human memory, engaging with the fragile and incomprehensible nature of both forms of memory. The symbol of a tall, skinny, house is the foundational memory of this installation. As it gets confused by overlapping layers of file names, error messages, and fractured wood, the distant original memory becomes something much larger and more complex. The imagery and text repeat and shift throughout the prints, overlaying, disrupting and complicating one another. The process of screen printing is essential to home_was_here​, allowing for replication and augmentation, while referencing the digital landscape that makes up the imagery.
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These prints include references to my current and past homes.
Photographing them installed in and around my current home further pushes the contrast between physical memories and digital storage. This continues the cycle of translating the memory into digital, then physical and back into a digital form again, like a JPEG deteriorates every time it is opened.
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This work is as much an exploration of my personal experiences with memory as it is of the digital structures that surround us Through this work, I do not aim to criticize these opposing facades of memory, instead, I aim to synthesize them as one, discovering how they may work together to frame the past.
About Luke
Luke Bonadonna is an artist from Larchmont, NY. Growing up in the suburbs outside of New York City, he began screen printing when he was 15 to create t-shirts for his band. From there, his interest in screen printing expanded. While attending Ithaca College, Luke has taken countless studio classes where he has explored themes of destruction in all sorts of media including woodworking, metalwork, and printmaking. He now creates large-scale immersive installations that explore disintegration, error, and the process of printing. Luke was awarded the Summer Scholar fellowship in the summer of 2019 and is currently carrying out an internship at The Ink Shop. He will graduate in spring 2020 from Ithaca College with a BFA degree focused in print media.