Abstract | Artist Statement | Image Gallery | Home| Close Portfolio (and return to SMP index) Artist Statement
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I genuinely feel that to explain my work or force some kind of message or meaning onto it is to limit its potential. My work is an attempt to elude explanation. For me, art is not about language or logic, it is about interacting and reacting to one’s surroundings. My work is concerned with confronting and stimulating the viewer while challenging how we interpret and engage the space around us. My goal is to create a fantastic space--a heightened reality where everything is bigger, brighter and more excessive. This is a space in constant flux, a place that crackles with excitement and where the buildup and release of tension is made visible. Art allows me to visualize and bring such a space into being. By making art I am able to project myself and my desires onto my surroundings, thereby manipulating the known world into something different. I am interested in activating all the possibilities of the space that surrounds us, and in making the unseen seen. As an artist I view space in regards to its potential to be altered and destabilized. I have always refused to limit myself to any one medium. I enjoy sculpture, photography, drawing, painting, printmaking, and digital media. The advantage of employing these many different methods of art making is that each informs and affects the others. It is only when I am able to step back and view my art in all of its many forms that I begin to understand what is going on. When viewed as a whole, there are many themes and sensibilities that can be found in all of the work. Vibrant color always plays a huge role in everything I make, pushing it into the realm of the fantastic. In using the brightest, most intense colors usually reserved for things like flowers and sunsets, I can tap into the magical quality and allure these have over us. I am obsessed with organic forms that are constantly morphing, growing in reaction to their surroundings and each other. Movement and tension play a big part in all of the work I do. I enjoy using materials in unique ways that contradict their inherent characteristics. Each medium has allowed me to understand and approach space in a different way. I view the two-dimensional plane in my watercolors and drawings as a site of limitless possibilities. This is a place where I can create an imagined space that follows its own rules without relying on anything outside itself. There is a freedom in these works in that they are not hindered by gravity or material constraints; they operate within a unique system of their own creation. This is a space that is free from logic and reason where one element cannot easily be separated from the complex whole. I have been told that my watercolors are very sculptural because they are largely concerned with forms in space. The forms in these works create a sense of constant motion as they stretch and morph into one another; they depict a space of flux and energy in their multi-layered construction. Th-----ese pieces are an intense buildup of layers of color, volume and dynamic brushwork. I work in a process of one layer contradicting and accentuating the previous one. In my photographic works I attempt to impose myself in between the camera and the subject, creating a layer of interference over the perception of the space. In these works, I am able to take elements from the space around me and bring them under my control. I employ several methods of manipulating the photographic process from agitating the camera to crumpling and drawing on the photos themselves as a way of distorting the space depicted within them. Playing with photographs is a way I visually project myself through the camera onto the world. I am not attempting to record what I see, but instead to create an alternate subjective vision in order to illustrate that there is no objective truth. Even in the act of looking, we all project ourselves onto our surroundings. In his Florence Series, Gerhard Richter uses photographs of cityscapes as backdrops over which he applies dramatic smears and streaks of paint. The result is an exciting play of color and motion with the photos coming in and out of focus amid the ruckus. In the painting 9.2.2000 we see an image of the streets of Florence on the edge of the river with streaks of red, orange and purple both mingling with and blocking out the architecture. Neither the paint nor the photograph are allowed to dominate the surface, causing a constant push and pull between the two. Richter's working of the painted surface has activated the previously static space of the photograph. In his manipulation of the surface of the photo, Richter has created a depiction of a fantastic reality with a glorious sense of disorientation. I read the starts and stops of color as the artist imposing himself onto the depicted space. I view my photographic work as a bridge between two dimensional and three dimensional space. The three-dimensional format of sculpture makes it possible for me to interject myself and my vision directly into space. My sculptures are large organic shapes that I construct out of welded steel frames and cover with layers of fabric, adding additional adornment over the surface of the forms. By introducing these foreign bodies into my environment I hope to trouble the space around them. My piece, corner pop, 2003 aggressively occupies the corner of the gallery with its loud green color and top-heavy sway. Its cartoonish curves and ruffled collar give the piece a ridiculous humor that contradicts the threat of its size and stance. The viewer is dwarfed by the piece and is forced to look up and confront this spectacle of a structure. Richard Serra once said, "I think that sculpture, if it has any potential at all, has the potential to create its own place and space, and to work in contradiction to the spaces and places where it is created in this sense. I am interested in work where the artist is the maker of ‘anti-environment’ which takes its own place or makes its own situation, or divides and declares its own area." (Stiles, 603). In his piece, Corner Prop, 1969 Serra used a lead pole-set at an angle-to prop up a seemingly dense lead box in the corner of the gallery space. This simple arrangement has a way of eliciting a powerful response from the viewer, who is drawn in by the interesting composition and then becomes aware of the threat of the steel cube crashing down on them. The implied weight of the box and the precarious angle of the lead pole have a very disorienting effect on the space. The artist was able to psychologically alter the space around the piece with the sheer presence and positioning of the materials. Serra relies on the properties of steel to affect the space around his works, and I attempt to create a similar effect with my use of color, shape, and size. Though we both employ the element of tension in the space, Serra’s precarious compositions are simple and straightforward, where my sculptures are much more fantastic and otherworldly. It is my intention to create objects that simply do not fit in. My sculptures are awkward, and seem to be conscious of their lack of position in the way they occupy space. Poised, 2003 is an object caught in the process of adjusting to a new environment, almost like a snail peeking out of its protective shell. This piece seems uneasy and hyper-aware of its surroundings; it is all about tension and awareness of being looked at. There is an excitement and sensuality to this piece in its red coloring, bristling fur and yellow stinger splinters. My sculptures appear to be aware of the viewer and they are responding to the scrutiny. They like to be watched, they’ve discovered their power of allure and are using it to their advantage. These objects are tempting in their sensual colors and textures but there is something hidden and dangerous about them at the same time. Rina Banerjee is a contemporary artist whose work tackles issues of gender and cultural identities with references to bodies and disease. She creates complex installations that include manipulated found objects, organic shapes, rich colors and fascinating textures. She populates the gallery with alien creatures and constructions that make us aware of our own bodies and the space we share with these objects. Her interest in the experience of the South Asian diasporic community comes through in her presentation of these dislocated objects that seem uncomfortable and out of place. By placing these foreign objects in the gallery, the artist has activated the space into something different. Banerjee says her works exist in a “transformative space,” where “one is able to receive all that is contaminant, undesirable or foreign. Disturbances are an ordinary occurrence” (Banerjee). Her piece Cholera Belt, 2000 seems like a creature from another world that has invaded the gallery space. This piece is impossible to ignore with its blaring use of color, gushy forms, and drippy textures. The object dares you to come in for a closer look at its complex stitching and unidentifiable fillings. The viewer becomes enraptured by this alien creature, sucked into its gravitational pull. I have also been interested in creating fantastic environments inspired by my sculptures and two-dimensional works. With my installation untitled, 2002 I was suggesting that the space an artist creates around himself is a work of art and worthy of attention. I constructed an enclosed space within the gallery and transformed it into a sensory overload of color, texture and dynamic shapes that surround and overwhelm the viewer. This installation was an attempt to create a stylized version of my studio and living space. The space was filled with materials I collected and objects that I had created over the period of the semester, all thrown together in a jumbled mass. With this work, I wanted to allow the viewer to experience the kind of environment that I create around myself. I was essentially declaring the space in which an artist lives and works as a fantastic space in itself. Once I heralded the importance of the artist’s personal space, it seemed necessary to investigate the processes that went into creating that space that are also evident in the work that comes out of it. This is the process of accumulation. Wherever I go I am always picking up things that speak to me and reflect my interests, anything from found objects in nature to pictures from magazines, to fabrics with appealing textures. These objects are things that stimulate me and inspire me to create. I surround myself with these objects as a constant source of stimulation but they also have to potential to become part of my work. It is a process of creating stimuli out of stimuli. Many of the things in my personal space are actual works that I have created because they serve as a continued stimulus. I create things that I want to see and share my space with. When I enter a new space such as a bedroom or studio space I am troubled by the emptiness, it staggers me and I am never comfortable within it. I have a need to make the space mine, to see myself reflected in my surroundings. Over time I begin to fill the space with stimulus: pictures, artwork, plants, fabrics, etc. Not only does this amassing inspire me to make work but I also see it as a way of affirming my existence. The buildup of material and artworks within my personal space serves as a record of my progress over time, it stands as evidence of my labor. I have found a fellow accumulator in the artist Lucas Samaras. This is perhaps most evident in his work Room #1, 1964 in which the artist created a replica of his bedroom in the family house he had just moved out of. Not only was this a sentimental snapshot of a period of his life coming to an end but a behind-the-scenes look into the artist in his environment. In choosing to display this reproduction of his personal space Samaras shifted our attention away from the finished art object and placed more importance on the artist and his habits. We are given a glimpse into the artist's mind and his methods of inspiration and creation. We see overflowing bags of yarn, cabinets full of curious objects, strange little experimental sculptures in various states of completion. Thomas McEvilley suggests that, “Room #1, with it’s presentation of the bedroom as a cosmos, expressed Samaras’ desire to eroticize the world of his art” (Chambers, 17). Throughout his career, Samaras has portrayed his personal space—apartment, studio, bedroom—as a magical place where beautiful things happen. For this show I have chosen to once again reference my studio and living space in the manner that the work is displayed within the gallery. I am attempting to alter the space into something more exciting and stimulating for myself and my audience. I want to showcase the individual works but present them within the context of the larger body of my work, almost like a retrospective show. This method of presentation allows me to have more control over the gallery space, presenting the work on its own terms. Having elements of different media together in this space creates a unified body of work where each piece is interpreted in relation to its surroundings. .I am staging an invasion of the corner of the gallery where my work will create its own space. My three large sculptures mark my territory within the gallery space allowing for the profusion of two-dimensional work to clutter the walls. I want to overload the corner of the gallery with as much visual stimulus as possible. By leaving many of the works unframed, they have an honesty to them, they are not pretending to be anything they are not. I think the unframed element makes the object seem more alive and subject to change, retaining an element of tension and incompleteness. When my work is reduced to sharp edges and tidy appearance, it is no longer appealing to me. This show is an attempt to display the works to my liking and the way that I find most effective mode of altering the gallery space. Jonathan Borofsky is an artist who challenged conventional notions of presentation and in his early ventures by displaying his work much like an installation. In describing the nature of his first show at the Paula Cooper Gallery, Borofsky explained “it was very personal and like my studio, paintings, sculptures, and drawings were all thrown in together” (Friedman). Borofsky’s installations gave artists the freedom to activate the previously static space of the gallery. He wanted to use his work to transform the gallery into an altered space. Borofsky explained his installation, saying “I would just overload the room so when people walked in they were taken by the whole space first and not by ‘Oh that’s a nice painting, how much do you think that one costs?’ It wasn’t about the singular object, but more about the totality of the whole made up of these parts” (Friedman). In order to account for the seeming randomness of the show, Borofsky felt it necessary to tie it all together by including a counting system, where each piece is catalogued with a number. I do not see a need to create an ordering system within my display because I think that the differing works serve to illuminate and work off each other and create a more complex space. The space I have created within the gallery is unlike any space that I have dealt with in the past. It is somewhere in between the worlds of installation, site specific work, and retrospective exhibition. I think of this show as a way for me to step outside of myself and really investigate where I’m at and where to go next. The experience of putting this senior show together has made me feel the pressure of displaying myself and my progress as an artist. This process has forced me to consider what is most important to my own ethics as an artist. The way I have chosen to present my work represents both the defensiveness of having to put myself on display, and the pleasure in dominating a space and in being seen. I have realized that even when I am not aware of it, I am always attempting to rebel against conformity. Through the creation of this fantastic space, I hope to allow for endless possibilities of interpretation, interaction, and wide-eyed wonderment. Works Cited Annotated Bibliography |
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