Curatorial Statement
Visceral Responds to Formal
Dark.
Massive.
Tumult.
The sounds of a blacksmith hammer and bellows are audible. Images of steel industry loll about in the mind’s eye and drop heavily on the toe. Belching fire roars and copper pipes wrench the plastic terra firma.
Clawing up and climbing out, the border of Mars’ foundry delivers the viewer to a fleeting world of commodities. Common objects have been gathered from a pocket, from a stroll through a second hand shop and from a walk in the woods. As viewer, we have been ejected from the center of the earth and dropped into the middle layer of reality. We are firmly seated in a chair and refocused on paper airplanes, once light and full of potential, now rooted with the weight of memory and mass. The representation of insouciant youth rests upon a bottle of Log Cabin syrup. The juxtaposition conjures allegory and invites formal concerns into our purview, if only to cease their banging on the door.
We are jolted out of the nostalgic reverie on dice and pocketknives.
And now–
Again at a border; the viewer can make a choice.
This time the boundary defines the choice between standing on firm ground or floating upward to the highest realm: the heavens. Here the mass of production loses all sense of gravity. Here the violent propulsions of forces colliding slow to a gentle ballet. Together, viewer and object hover in a celestial white box and, together, we consider our conception and consequent relatedness to history, journey and cosmos.