2011, Paint and rust on paper, 50"w x 72"h (each)
These pieces are informed by the landscape surrounding my studio practice. Living in and exploring Detroit changed how I view architecture and the home. In Detroit there are city blocks of abandoned homes taken over by feral animals and grass. Empty stamp plants, break shops and corner markets, yet it seems as if the domestic space has potential to continue to be a working domestic space. It is as if all the elements are in place but there remains some inability to mash them together; an inability to return to a state of normal.
When I make my work, I am not so much infatuated with the romanticism of rust or waste as I am with a metonymical relation between objects, aesthetics and existence. An object does not prove incomprehensible when it is defined through the body’s interaction. A seemingly mundane and repeated paper-towel starts to have humanistic implications; marks made upon it conjure up such extremes as violence and boredom. Embedded in these accounts of human social ills lies an inherent negativity causing aesthetics to become escapist yet cosmically resonant, obsessed with perfection and with stasis, defining vast timelines with a fanatically patient minuteness.
A Daimler Company
