that which cannot be held
EVERSON MUSEUM OF ART
The Robineau Gallery
Syracuse . NY
JAN 29 - APR 04 . 2010
My work mines malleable and evanescent processes that cannot be stilled nor held; explosions, water, weather patterns, clouds, steam and the making of language in stop-action temporal activity and fleeting memory. Forms and ideas undulate between structure and elusiveness, obscuring precision and veiling detail beyond focus of any definitive planes. Softened edges of the installation oscillate between line and volumetric mass, form and illusion, memory and forgetfulness, seamlessly blending interior and exterior, stability and temporality, space and structure, abstraction and reality, self and world.
It is in this momentary and liminal state, where form and content remain in pause, as if coming up for air, that gives rise and recognition to the motivation behind my practice.
That which cannot be held, is under constant transformation blending time, memory, reality and specificities of place as a transitional location ripe for imagining, just this side of dreaming. What is presumed to be fixed remains slippery and on the move. Nothing is ever permanent in these parts. Here temporality meets stasis -- artifice and reality come together and have the ability to transport us.
Close to two miles of galvanized cable is finger crocheted and hangs in animated suspension creating fluidity that extends endlessly outwards. Its visual mass holds the room in captivity. Drawn through space and time, the linear volume is suggestive of ink scroll drawings of a Chinese mountain range and contour drawings of the upper most crust of the earth’s topography noting elevations and recessions. Loosely tethered together by woven means the linear drawing hangs in space as a floating membrane. Sharp and ‘sfumare’ shadows reflect off the wall planes to flesh out the ‘body’ of the mass by adding density and visual weight. One can say that we are forever tethered to memory and language.
By physical means the suspended contour harkens back to my interest in the language, semiotics and the act of writing in the creation of signs. Medieval scribes reveal that all letters are transmutable. The steel cable twists and curls comically through animated space, expressing concepts of transcription, construction and transformation; shape shifting – language, environment and meaning have the materiality potential to be writ large, acquiring meaning from shear material densities. A field of flowers, is painted white silencing color, straddles the area shared by viewers and the metal mass. Tactile edges of the each plant blur in depth of field, serving as early abstracted templates/surrogates of all botanicals.
Projected through the interlaced wire a full scale video runs of the thawing of the waterfall at Chittenango Falls in CNY in slow motion. Monochromatic images place the subject into an abstracted lens removed from reality, placing emphasis on the symbolic and metaphoric opening interpretation to spring forth; activity spills forth, the streaming of consciousness, the thawing of memory. The transitory nature of the media, by its very nature denotes change is imminent.
It is here, in-between shimmering impressions where light and shadow traverse, line and space meet, language and environment intersect suggest that each is necessary for the other to speak. This type of trip taking propels me into alternative places and the unknown, where I may take up residence, if only for a while. It is within these transitory moments that remain present in material, in motion, and in memory, that cannot be harnessed nor held and remain alive, forever speaking. - JEP 2010
EVERSON MUSEUM OF ART
The Robineau Gallery
Syracuse . NY
JAN 29 - APR 04 . 2010
My work mines malleable and evanescent processes that cannot be stilled nor held; explosions, water, weather patterns, clouds, steam and the making of language in stop-action temporal activity and fleeting memory. Forms and ideas undulate between structure and elusiveness, obscuring precision and veiling detail beyond focus of any definitive planes. Softened edges of the installation oscillate between line and volumetric mass, form and illusion, memory and forgetfulness, seamlessly blending interior and exterior, stability and temporality, space and structure, abstraction and reality, self and world.
It is in this momentary and liminal state, where form and content remain in pause, as if coming up for air, that gives rise and recognition to the motivation behind my practice.
That which cannot be held, is under constant transformation blending time, memory, reality and specificities of place as a transitional location ripe for imagining, just this side of dreaming. What is presumed to be fixed remains slippery and on the move. Nothing is ever permanent in these parts. Here temporality meets stasis -- artifice and reality come together and have the ability to transport us.
Close to two miles of galvanized cable is finger crocheted and hangs in animated suspension creating fluidity that extends endlessly outwards. Its visual mass holds the room in captivity. Drawn through space and time, the linear volume is suggestive of ink scroll drawings of a Chinese mountain range and contour drawings of the upper most crust of the earth’s topography noting elevations and recessions. Loosely tethered together by woven means the linear drawing hangs in space as a floating membrane. Sharp and ‘sfumare’ shadows reflect off the wall planes to flesh out the ‘body’ of the mass by adding density and visual weight. One can say that we are forever tethered to memory and language.
By physical means the suspended contour harkens back to my interest in the language, semiotics and the act of writing in the creation of signs. Medieval scribes reveal that all letters are transmutable. The steel cable twists and curls comically through animated space, expressing concepts of transcription, construction and transformation; shape shifting – language, environment and meaning have the materiality potential to be writ large, acquiring meaning from shear material densities. A field of flowers, is painted white silencing color, straddles the area shared by viewers and the metal mass. Tactile edges of the each plant blur in depth of field, serving as early abstracted templates/surrogates of all botanicals.
Projected through the interlaced wire a full scale video runs of the thawing of the waterfall at Chittenango Falls in CNY in slow motion. Monochromatic images place the subject into an abstracted lens removed from reality, placing emphasis on the symbolic and metaphoric opening interpretation to spring forth; activity spills forth, the streaming of consciousness, the thawing of memory. The transitory nature of the media, by its very nature denotes change is imminent.
It is here, in-between shimmering impressions where light and shadow traverse, line and space meet, language and environment intersect suggest that each is necessary for the other to speak. This type of trip taking propels me into alternative places and the unknown, where I may take up residence, if only for a while. It is within these transitory moments that remain present in material, in motion, and in memory, that cannot be harnessed nor held and remain alive, forever speaking. - JEP 2010
