apparent:
adjective
Clearly visible or understood;
obvious.
Seeming real or true, but not necessarily
so.
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| "Untitled (Pale 4)" 1999 latex paint on 100 bricks |
I am an artist.
In particular, I am interested in using painting as a tool to explore complex
philosophical ideas. Painting can be simply defined as a surface coated with
color or pigment, or as the action of producing such an object. Given this
broad definition, how are we to delineate between “art” and “ordinary?” We are
left questioning context, intention, and function. It is this slippery spot
where definition becomes insufficient and relativity becomes apparent that
interests me. So, I approach painting from many points on its periphery all at
once; as object, as surface, as illusion, as action, as material. This is not
saying that any single work produced embodies all these places, but
rather that all the works taken into consideration at once begin to solidify
the concepts that concern me.
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| Installation view of work in "Beyond the Second Dimension" Painted Desert Gallery, Lancaster, PA, 2010 |
Philosophically,
I am a phenomenologist. The idea that the only “true” object exists in the mind
of the perceiver, created from a hybrid of sensed and learned knowledge, is by
no means new, but is more poignant in our current condition than ever.
Knowledge is fragmented into systems of digital data. Computers are on the
verge of super-intelligence while the virtual world of video games grows
increasingly complex. The real and the fictive are blurred through “Reality
TV.” Today, we are presented with more succinct examples of the relative nature
of reality than we have ever been in the past. This, like the insufficiency of
simple definitions like that of “painting,” is what I am interested in.
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| Installation view of work in "Collision Cross Section" GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, Reading, PA, 2011 |
Generally, I
do not intend the works to explain these conditions universally, but rather to
use the very specific example of Painting as an object lesson to create works
that live at the edges. The works operate only minimally as “paintings.”
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| Installation view of work in "Collision Cross Section" Showing "Untitled (First Proposition for the Construction of a Painting in the Post-Historical Age, Version 2)" in foreground, and "Untitled (Necrophilia)" on left in rear |
