( h o m e )
Artist’s Statements often have an air of omniscience about them.
Not only does the artist seem to know everything about his work—
he gives the impression that he knew all about the work even before it was begun.
A statement is really a highly sensitized look backward.
Happily (or perhaps conveniently) this way of thinking parallels my way of working:
I rarely plan, and almost always fail when I do.
Only in retrospect do overarching themes come to light.
And so, a few things that I have noticed about my most recent work:
Clarity of form and color, on an intimate scale.
Stripped down visually, concepts laid bare.
Change the category, change the meaning.
Perception as a game.
Nature filtered through culture.
Humor above, disquiet below.
| B a c k g r o u n d a n d W o r k i n g M e t h o d s Since 2003, I have produced formally simple representations of Modernist artworks and everyday items. The simultaneous use and subversion of the language of Modernism—geometric shape, strong color, the “purity” of abstraction—betrays a love of the source, a questioning of its premises, and an investigation of its possibilities in the present day. The employment of this stripped-down formal vocabulary also signals a concern with essentials—with the visual sine qua non of each genre, and with the basic identity of a thing. My working process involves the collection, modification, and assemblage of found objects and materials. The selection and gathering of these is an important facet of my work: it is in this phase that I often will undertake the use of a new item or form, or realize the solution to a previously intractable problem. Invariably, though, there is the matter of trial and error: of juxtaposing, substituting, and synthesizing objects in the space of the studio; of contemplating the results over time; and of honing broad ideas into succinct and evocative formal and conceptual packages. |
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