What is my work about?
The works I make are meant to be alive, shifting and changing within its static state. Each painting, sculpture, or video work, renegotiates its terms with its own medium, initiating an endless loop of self reflection and an ongoing dialogue with an outside. By setting concrete imagery in motion both within its own staticity and also with the viewer and the artist, I am creating an ongoing exchange. The painted work is often pushed toward the boundaries of its own compartmentalizations, creating problems within the image itself. A restraint is applied however, that offers no solution but holds it from falling apart. This methodology is also used in the ceramic and video work; things are pushed to the edges and then held in tension. My practice is about a study of this anxiety in the unknown. These works are meant to represent the struggle of the abstracted state of a thing, and the exploration into the tensions that these difficulties create.
Artist Statement
Making art is about setting something in motion. For my practice, it is about pushing against compartmentalization and finding new, unfamiliar access points. Art is not always about documentation or representing a filtered view of a thing, it is about many things at once. In my varied mediums, it is about setting certain elements against each other to find a new and changing visual language. Within this language, art can begin to demand that one contemplate artworks in relation to their own internal and external relationship with it.
My paintings are not about seduction and often not about beauty. Instead they are about opening up an ongoing exchange, nudging a more complex intercommunication with the viewer and also with the artist. Images that are flirting with both figuration and abstraction are held in a suspended state against categorization. This allows them to enter into larger, more varied interactions.
Presently, my paintings are rendered from digital iPad drawings. This reverse approach (from the digital to the traditional) creates a tension, as technology is set against itself; by rendering a digital image in oil paint, I am attempting the erasure of the technology that was used to create it. The point is not to see that the erasure has been done but that it is still happening, never to finish, within the painted image itself.
A similar idea is also applied to the ceramic works. Often beginning with the familiar form of a water pitcher or vase, a domestic object that exemplifies a human presence, it is shaped and formed to relate back to to the human body, but presented always empty and hollow. By pitting its seductive visuality (representing flesh, body), against its emptied and useless state (absence of water, flowers), the live push and pull of this dichotomy both highlights the presence of the spectator, and represents its struggle with its own objecthood.
My video works are made in the style of “movie trailers”, a genre used to create anticipation. All my film trailers are for films that do not exist yet and may never be made. In this way, their lack of a resolution or denouement, creates a work that will forever exist in this liminal space of anxiety and flux. This is where a viewers awareness of the space between satisfaction and suspense, can create a deeper involvement with a film that doesn’t exist, or the only thing of a film that does.
Whether the work is a painting, a ceramic vessel, or a video piece, all are posing questions within their respective mediums. They are all meant to represent this transitional space, to be a live thing that is only static in its form but not in its content. By never being still, with no singular resolution, the work maintains a desire for continual engagement, from the artist, with the viewer, and within the artwork itself.
CV
EDUCATION
2001-2005
New York University: BFA
SOLO OR TWO PERSON EXHIBITION
2012
Cafe Nihilism, Green Tea Gallery Worldwide, Presented by United Brothers Inc, NYC, NY
Commuter Duplex, The Suburban, Oak Park IL
2011
Divine Terra, Green Gallery East, Milwaukee, WI
New Bricks, Green Gallery West, Milwaukee WI
EXHIBITIONS AND PROJECTS
2014
Who Do You Love, Mathew Gallery, Berlin, GERMANY
Curation of 4 person booth with artists Lisa Jo, Tom Humphreys, Enrico Baj, and Pentti Monkkonen; Balice Hertling Gallery, Paramount Ranch Art Fair, Los Angeles, CA
Liquor Store, Paradise Garage, Venice, CA
2013
Homes and Gardens, Freedman Fitzpatrick Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Freak Out, Greene Naftali Gallery, NYC, NY
Neoteny, 247365 Gallery NYC, NY
The Politics of Friendship, STUDIOLO, Zurich, SWITZERLAND, Contribution to publication produced for exhibition
2012
Emergency Cheesecake, Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC NY, Screening of film trailer
Synesthesia, M+B Gallery, Los Angeles CA
Blackbelt Mindmapping, Arakawa / Gambaroff / Jo
Pro Choice, Vienna AUSTRIA
Group Show, Balice Hertling Gallery, Paris FRANCE
Potlucks of Destruction Cafe, Swiss Institute, NYC NY
Blackbelt Mindmapping, Performance with Ei Arakawa and Nik Gambaroff, Pro Choice, Vienna AUSTRIA
2011
Swap Meet, curated by Amy Yao and Wendy Yao, Joshua tree, CA
Looking Back / The 6th White Columns Annual – Selected by Ken Okiishi and Nick Mauss
White Columns NY
the derelict presentation of ANOTHER MASTERPIECE!!
introducing YYSL, Whore Moans, Eau de Toilet, Dancing at the Dump, YYSL Cougar, Birthday Suit for Baby Boo!, Mother-in-Law, etc…
Performance at JF Storefront, NYC
2010
Is a rusted petticoat enough to bring it down to earth? Jack Hanley Gallery, NY
Us and them
Mike Rollins Fine Art, NY
In the Hallway, 179 Canal Street, NY
Ghost of Birthdays Past (Happy Birthday Baby Boo!), P.S.1/ MOMA, NY, Performance during Greater New York 2010
Come to My Opening! Jack Hanley Gallery, NY
Performance of Ghosts of Birthdays Past (special appearance by Baby Boo!)
2008
Swap Meet, California Biennial; High Desert Test Sites, CA
Performance and installation with Debo Eilers
2007
Wu-Tang and Googleplex, Passerby Gallery, Gavin Brown Enterprises, NY
The Narrows 2014, Film trailer
Sorry, can’t talk at work, 2012 (collaborative movie with Amy Yao), Film trailer
Station Game, (collaborative movie with Amy Yao), Film trailer