Artist Statement: Sculpture

My sculpture practice, as I define it, is a self-conscious and bureaucratic approach to making complex and labor-intensive physical objects. An autonomous sculpture is created and upon its completion, is modified in some way by an ironic installation situation, performance, or simply a secondary sculptural element. The nature of the work and the materials in which it are executed is only dependent on the circumstances of conceptual need. In other words, the work is not bound to any single methodology or technique, only the representation of underlying ideas. My work exists in real space, and is focused on emphasizing gesture, form, and material. For example, my metal sculpture is executed in solid steel rather than sheet metal or pipe in order to maintain a material integrity and massive solidity that reinforces the piece’s visual properties, thereby making the work true to its material, fully reaching its physical potential. I am equally interested in the situational ironies that can occur in my installations, and often see them as more important than the objects that are used to stage them. My objects are used to produce a theatrical situation which calls attention to the conditions that make sculpture operate. Sculpture as a system is the subject.

In Untitled Sculptures with Wall, I machined and polished six steel objects and installed them on the floor immediately in front of a white wall mounted to a steel frame on wheels. The wall becomes a subtle modifier for the floor pieces, shifting the interpretation between the honest sculpture and the situation that seems to undermine its support system. I have used industrial X-rays of steel sculptures that display their metallurgic and mechanical flaws to produce a similar effect in Untitled Sculptures with X-rays. In Untitled Sculpture with Arrow, the modifier is more obvious, relegating my own sculpture to the status of a used car or drive-in movie. Often materials alone can produce ironies between objects installed in a space, or even within individual pieces. Untitled pieces machined from solid UHMW Poly-ethylene produce a material contrast to their doppelganger in steel. Use of solid graphite, lead, or Styrofoam can each influence the nature of a piece. Other internal mechanisms might be the contrast between a bag of small found objects and a large replica of one of the items reproduced in cast lead. A hot plate that keeps indifferent looking bronzes at a pleasant temperature as in A Warm and Friendly Sculpture makes minimal forms exhibit a conceptual behavior change.

At its core, my work is about these borders and systems and the bureaucratic way that I engage them. The physical objects that I produce are the products of this interest. I approach sculpture as a means to achieve a physical manifestation of my conceptual intentions in hopes that these objects will convey the significance of the mental constructs responsible for their forms.