Joely Ramo
Joely Ramo is a multidisciplinary collage artist working with digital, analogue, and 3-D collage and assemblage. She has exhibited across the United States, especially in Florida and Maryland. Her recent solo exhibitions have included Chisme in Miami, Gateway Gallery in Baltimore, and SOCAPA in Los Angeles.
Infusing both Kabbalah and Buddhism mysticism into her collages, Joely Ramo creates compositions where figures and portraits shift through planes of distortion and color, all while seemingly melting and morphing into their environments. The digital collages (When the Ego Returns) are quite colorful and contain a color palette mixing both pastels and neon tones with lucid iconography of mysticism and portraits, creating a thoroughly hallucinogenic effect. These dream-like compositions reveal shifting transformations amidst eternal chambers of cycles. Just like in mysticism, there is a consistent theme of rebirth, as forms seem to ‘recycle’ into each other. This is especially becomes most poignant in the digital catalogues where figures and abyss-like realms seem to shift into holographic illusions.
With the analogue paper collages (Window Into Worlds), we will find Joely Ramo often incorporating mystical iconography, such as depictions of the Buddha and temples such as the Taj Mahal. Other images include fusions of a split hoplite mask from Ancient Greece or spliced scenes of a forest and the galaxy. These universal realms are meant to show a sense of oneness, a grand interconnection where cultures and concepts merge as one entity of enlightenment. In the digital collages, we will often find hues ot red, orange, and yellow, as if a great Sun God has descended to connect us with our ancestors, to reveal ancient wisdom and spirits. Even if you are agnostic about these mystical concepts, you can still appreciate the collages in their expansive nature to reveal consciousness beyond literal representation and presentation to reveal enlightenment.
The connection to sun-like forms in central in the digital collages as Joely Ramo seeks to represent a oneness with Mother Earth. Such iconography, along with ancient mystical references communicates a consistent connection to the ‘other side’, the spirit world. Within these compositions of swirls, gradual shifts, and portraiture baked in an Amun-Ra-like entity, our ancestors seek to flow from these artworks as if to connect with us in apparitional sfumato. There is a consistent theme of markings of the past, present, and future as one through ancient, contemporary, and celestial symbols as well as attributes. In the works of Joely Ramo, time is a singular evolution.
These hallucinogenic compositions, colors, iconography, portraits, and forms within the portfolio of Joely Ramo bathed in Kabbalah and Buddhism mysticism reveals a grand divine destiny. Through these artworks, she seems to be at one with her fate to reveal planes which shift amidst ancient and sun-like entities. In these distorted realms, we will find inner peace, enlightenment, and a sense of wonder to discovering a purpose greater than what civilization offers us within our daily routines. Joely Ramo awakens us to experience life in a sense of grand potential through visual poetry which communicates through holographic, illumination, and split serenity within planes of spirits.
