An Introduction

apparent:

            adjective

            Clearly visible or understood; obvious.

            Seeming real or true, but not necessarily so.

"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.

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.

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.” 

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