STATEMENT OF WORK

How accurately can the transmitted be received? I am intrigued by the dynamics of the channel, the filter, the noise intervening between the sender, the message, and the recipient. What cognitive processes are invoked upon message reception? It transforms entirely, as individual subtext and subjective experience decode the symbols according to personal preferences, inclinations, and ideologies. What does “Hi. How are you?” signify to you and you and you? Every communicative act results in an emergent complexity. Linguistic expressions, affective states, and visual representations do not encapsulate a singular moment of comprehension. Rather, they engender an entirely new construct, distinct from the original utterance, the communicator, and the recipient, yet intrinsically interconnected.

I tend to utilize materials, poetics, and subjects that, when combined, hold specific personal value and experience, but when transmitted visually, create a vague inflection point—a fractured mystery. When provided with a snippet, a simple scene or gesture, a fold, a smudge, the receiver must access their own associative sensibilities, resulting in a separate creation from the object, the perceiver, and the perceived. 

A fourth thing.

My work is made out of a combination of various materials. I use oil paint, graphite, wax, plastic, found and industrial materials, and the physical minutiae of the day-to-day in unusual combinations and contexts, attempting to find some poetic merging. Unfinished walls are installed as imperfect enclosures. Melamine particle board is costumed as a cowboy, or cut into to mimic a barren, simplified landscape painting. Drawings are placed in sculptures and paintings, exalted by framing and placement, alluding to the naive and unformed. Similar to an underpainting, they question hierarchy and value, suggesting a more personal, familiar, and immediate experience. 

Overlaying, covering, masquerading, enclosing, or turning away are my primary operative modes. These forms of hiding result in a reveal or recontextualization, an inverted vulnerability and intimacy. Depictions of sunglasses, vortices, and walls allude to this obscuring. I aim to let the works show their cards, then pull back their subjects, veiled in acts of searching, desire, and confusion.