In the space of absence.
Intimacy. Fear. Proximity. Disturbing nearness. Loss of shallow distance. Contamination. Enclosure. Enclusion. Exclusion. Exception. Endless waiting. Out of place. Out of time. Out of tune. Profound unsettling. Mode of eradication. Intolerance. Non-recognition. Residue. Degeneration of public space. Incessant wanting. Defense mechanism of self enclosure. Numbness.
...The 'state of emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule
(Walter Benjamin, 1940).
I hide my own culpability in consumer whoring. Yet my collecting, harvesting, and acquiring has been redirected to objects of decay found along the street side. I am drawn to the symbolic and formal elements of decay, the way in which an object has been altered by its mere existence. The worn, broken, torn nature of the aged object seems to make it more real, more honest. So I collect decayed urban refuse. I hold onto it for awhile. Cogitate. Eventually the formal and symbolic elements of the materials and my current research meld. Then I make. The making is a visceral reaction against the cult of the instant, the new, the forever young, forever fertile with its pushed up breast and swollen lips, a reaction against perpetual numbness and defense mechanisms of self enclosure. Cognitively, emotionally, I am a full participant in our capital culture. But I find myself making, assembling, revaluing objects of refuse, moving from spectation toward production, not mechanized but sensualized by the hand, by my hand. Mind and body working in rebellion, in synch; the nonsense and sense merge as coherent objects. The sculptural constructs become a stand in for the shadow self, an empty self.
