fbpx

Artist Statement

There is a gap between what is known about the nature of existence, and how it is experienced on the ordinary level. All matter, including bodies, is composed of elements that are probabilities (electron clouds). We live in a home of such vast space that it cannot be conceived of by the imagination, only by mathematics. So, we exist as the mundane, composed of the sublime. My artistic practice explores the breach between the narrative, sequential manner in which life is experienced, and the accumulation of knowledge that has been obtained through physics, philosophy, and spiritual traditions. Rooted in the liminal arts, drawing and collage, I use multiple media to externalize the animate abstractions of being. My projects are composed of diverse corporeal expressions (stop-motion animation, collage/ bricolage, and painting). The central concept is transcribed into a variety of forms. For example, when making work around the concept and experience of “the instant,”projected light is handled as a solid material to be divided, sifted and chopped. Narrative tropes are given similar treatment, distilled to their essentials until they are a rhythm rather than a story. Mathematical equations are expressed in a form available to the senses, explicit transformations. Each translation reveals new aspects of the original concept. Meanwhile the voids in our senses and understanding are manifested through emphatic absence.

For the past seven years, time has been the primary subject of my work, as it is the link between the sensible ordering of the self, and the incomprehensible scale of cosmic rotation, atomic decay. In previous artworks I have focussed on sensory time and its limits. This interest gave stop-motion animation a prominent position in my work. Composed of unaltered still photographs strung together through a computer program, the “real” situations captured by the lens are transmogrified through temporality. The limits of human sense can be either exposed or capitalized upon through the precise temporal control of the medium. My most recent project examined the manufacturing of historical time. Rather than traditional narrative form, “Old Powerhouse” proposed an alternative model of history; an abstract dialogue describing massive energies and their visible and invisible manipulations. This alternative historical interpretation will be embodied in an installation work composed of an experimental animation, an immersive pyramidical architectural form that must be entered in order to view the animation, and a steam machine. By examining history in a different mode, a new light is cast on the present. My upcoming project, “Cinemadrama” will be a one night event, occurring at the Ladner Clock Tower, UBC.