Matti Havens
Artist Statement

I want my artwork to be something different than the traditional art experience. I would rather my work provoke thought than be beautiful. I think the best way to do this is to make them interactive, surprising, strange, and controversial. My work is more about the idea than the actual act of making it. I could spend an hour thinking about the artwork, then an hour making it -- the time spent doesn't have to be significant. The provocative nature of my work will cause the audience to think more about it and the issues it raises than a work of art that took more time to make. My ideas go against the norms of the average art experience. I would rather surprise someone with the unexpected (like the mirror under the toilet seat) than have someone see the same old passive non-engaging artwork. I want the gallery experience to be something memorable and thought provoking. Many artists have been involved in these same issues and the artists I feel closest to are Marcel Duchamp, Jeff Koons, and Mike Kelley.
What issues engage people to think? I need to tap into things that people feel strongly about. Belief systems are what people feel passionate about so I must provoke people on that level. Presenting the audience with issues like race, sex, politics and religion will definitely elicit a response. Hopefully this response will incite further discussion and debate. I would like people to think about why they think how they do.
There are many different ways a work can be controversial. One type of controversy is to present something that ordinarily would not be suitable for public display. Presenting something that is considered gross or disgusting fits under this category. For example my previous works using meat as a medium would be considered by most to be gross. I can also harness controversy by violating or perverting symbols that represent deeply held personal or social beliefs. For example my flag pieces are symbols that are not meant to be tampered with and by tampering with them I desecrate and change their meanings.
The work How Santa Died for His Sins represents another type of controversy because it tackles the always sensitive issue of religion. Mayor Giuliani in New York was angered by the use of elephant dung in the depiction of the Virgin Mary. This controversy was probably beneficial to the artist and the Museum because it gave them publicity even though it was publicity in the negative sense. I also touch upon the sensitive issue of race with a piece like Equal Opportunity Chess, which is simply a chessboard and all its pieces painted gray.
Presenting an object out of its normal context thereby elevating it to an art object and making it useless is another way to produce controversy. Marcel Duchamp was the first to do this by inverting a urinal, titling it Fountain, and presenting it in a gallery context. Not only did he elevate a non-art object to an art object he also changed its meaning with its title.
My artwork could be seen to have many meanings, some that I had intended and some that I did not. That is to say I might have intended a certain meaning for a particular work but the audience might interpret it in another way that I had not intended. That is fine with me as long as the piece sparks some thought. I don't think one interpretation is better or more valid than any other is. The meaning I take from a piece may be totally different from the meaning others take from it. In this way, subjectivity becomes more important than objectivity.
Marcel Duchamp is the originator of using the found objects as artworks. More importantly, he challenged the concept of what art was. That is why he is important to me and anyone else that uses found objects in their art as a way to subvert meaning. For example when he presented Fountain, which is his inverted urinal, it monumentally changed what could be presented as art. That piece alone and its implications to the art world forever would change what would be considered art. When he first presented it, it drew a lot of criticism for exactly this reason. Many did not regard it as art because it was not art in the traditional sense. This same issue has been raised in regards to my work. I realize that it may not be art in the traditional sense, but it nonetheless is art. Another piece in which he brilliantly changes how both objects are viewed is entitled Bicycle Wheel. With this piece he took a barstool and attached to its seat a bicycle wheel so that the wheel was upright and still able to spin freely. By combining the two different objects he destroyed the usefulness of both objects and created an art object. In different ways, in both these works, he subverts the meanings of the individual objects.
Jeff Koons also relies upon many of the same methods that Duchamp used but at the same time he strongly plays upon our attitudes about material and commercial culture. The material and commercial part of our culture is taken for granted, but nonetheless, it is an important facet of our lifestyle. I admire the way Koons evokes the commercial by the slick and nicely finished way he presents his works. For example the way he presents his vacuum cleaner series in flourescently lit plexiglass cases makes them useless as tools, elevates them as art objects (almost to the extent of making them look like museum type artifacts of some sort)and makes a comment upon our clean obsessed commercial culture. These methods of presentation and these reflections upon our material and commercial are also things with which I identify.
The artwork of Mike Kelley is controversial to say the least. One of his favorite provocative topics is sex. Mike Kelley's work is influential to me because of their brash, in your face style. His works, especially through the use of bad language immediately elicits a response. I like his juvenile commentary style where he mocks the sexual attitudes and other insecurities of our culture. He frequently elevates the raunchy and inappropriate to an artistic level. For example his sex joke cartoons are great examples of all the things I mention above.
With the use of all these methods I hope to make the gallery experience an experience not normally associated with the gallery. Hopefully my work will change what the audience perceives as art. Even though it is not art in the traditional sense it is still art. I hope to make my audience think and respond and if I have to use controversial means to do so then so be it. In this way each person's experience will be different relying upon their personal means of evaluating the world that surrounds them. All I want to do is make people think. Why shouldn't artwork in a gallery try to do this?

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