The Shadowlands

The angst of modern cultural addictions permeates my existence. The dictates of mediated culture, the dictates of self are so commingled they are indistinguishable—inseparable. Where I begin and end is lost.

As society moves further and further away from direct experience and once, twice removed becomes the norm with intermediaries carefully massaging the information we receive, I am compelled to work in a very direct manner. The more distanced and disconnected I become from that which seems real, the more I empty myself into the tactility of my work. A direct, raw connection is forged and it becomes a visceral response to my struggle with self, capital culture, and the enormity of the vast slippery feeling I have that something is terribly wrong within
our mediated cosmos.

Black and white cease in purity. Decay’s reference to ensuing death serves only to bare witness to life. Each becomes embedded with an otherness. And my own darkness pierces me.

Recurrent patterns/habits emanate from the brokenness of self. Tension resides where my good and shadows run alongside one another. I am deeply tarnished. Conflicted with contradictions. The very thing I hate, the thing I swear I won’t do or say, that is exactly what I do.

Abstract and organic fields of discarded urban refuse embedded in industrial materials becomes a metaphor for self. Simultaneously the self becomes a stand-in for a cultural expression of communal beliefs and emotion which for the most part are denied.

I am in the shadowlands. YET. Not embracing, but in spite of, I find hope wrestled from these shadows—an emergent beauty, an odd sense of wholeness and redemption.