Words
My work is the coagulation of nebulous yearnings and fears. I scavenge art history, the detritus of daily life, and the contemporary world to create my images. Often it is only in retrospect that I can trace the origins of an image. Trying to trace the antecedents of an image before it is complete can smother it.
I am a sculptor. For the last few years I have been making sculptures using software that is usually used in the film and gaming industries. Though my recent work does not have a physical existence I still think of what I do as making sculpture. I render views of these virtual 3D objects from various angles in different environments and lighting. I print these images and think of them as photographs of my sculpture.
I choose to create virtual sculpture because it allows me to work at large scales and with imaginary or unobtainable materials. I also have the ability to animate the sculptures. I loop my animations to avoid narrative. I condemn my creations to a Sisyphean existence.
Often I start with an ordinary object and extrapolate from it. Head Triptych was originally inspired by a pencil eraser. I started to think about it as a fleshy knob constrained in its ferrule. In retrospect I think that I combined this idea with a Martin Puryear sculpture (Untitled) and some products I created years ago when I used 3D computer graphics to make brass fittings. Sometimes I think of the close-up of the skin as distant cousin to the grid of small, abstract paintings Chuck Close combines in his recent portraits.
The metal structures in Suet, Quorum of Redundant Servers, and Diversity are based on the speed rail construction system I used when I was working on television sets. Suet comes from the suet in wire meshes my mother used to nail to trees in the winter to feed birds. It felt like crucified fat. For Quorum of Redundant Servers I was thinking about the similarity of the confinement (torture) of animals in factory farms with the alienation of office cubicles. I am a moist, pink guy. I made Diversity because I just felt it was important to share my dyspepsia with people of all colors.
Discobolus, as its name implies, was inspired by Myron’s Discobolus. I took this icon of grace, power, and beauty and lashed it to a walker. The contrast of the ideal with the ugliness and frailty of the body and mind is a theme I keep returning to.
The origin of Spanner is the spanners people wear to create a large holes in their earlobes. Given my previous work I guess it is no surprise that a piece of metal stretching and distorting flesh intrigues me. I ended up choreographing a walk for the sculpture and created an animation of it.
CPAP: Prana is a mash-up of the Indian concept of prana, the breath of life, with a CPAP machine used to treat sleep apnea.