I reproduce existing objects and scenarios in slightly altered forms. I alter these objects and scenarios to make them unfamiliar in order to make an element legible to which we have become habituated.
In my project Metaphysician, Heal Thyself, I reproduced the psychopharmacological scenario. I created forms for intake, for self-evaluation, and for prescription. I took the role of the “Metaphysician”, meant to mimic the psychiatrist. I held meetings with patients and prescribed medication. The medications were hand-made sugar pills in custom designed packaging. In my reproduction of the medical scenario the directness of the encounter, my non-professional status, and the individualized nature of each prescription made the official scenario legible as cold, removed, and systematic.
In my architectural reproductions, I take for granted that all material things are, in their very form, shot through with ideas, promises, and politics. Furniture and architecture are the subjects of this body of work because they are the most embedded of “things” of daily living, and are therefore effective in subtly naturalizing ideas. I reproduce fragments of architecture and abstract them to challenge the authority and “naturalness” of the world as it is presented. I warp architecture to point to other ways the world could be built. I isolate balconies and staircases to highlight the politics of ownership, mass address, and surveillance they embody. I dramatize the way the hierarchy functions spatially by heightening the inaccessible, singular, and protected nature of the balcony. They reflect on the absent figures who occupy elevated spaces like papal balconies and high rise penthouses.
Reimagining the objects and scenarios of everyday life is necessary and possible because the form of the world is produced, not given. Since the form is not given, then it is not permanent, natural, or even necessarily logical. That the world is made also means that I, or anyone, can build it. What we build, however contingent, matters. Form and material “speak” and the formation of selves is not immune to this speech: we understand our social roles from architecture, from clothing, from systems of transportation. Forms matter, and matter forms and informs us at levels material, symbolic, metaphorical, and psychological. My work draws on contemporary theory regarding the behavior of objects on subjects. I, along with many contemporary artists, have been drawn especially to Arjun Appadurai and Bill Brown, as well as to Tim Ingold and Timothy Morton. Stemming from my interest in Thing Theory and Object Oriented Ontology, I am drawn toward formal sculpture as evidenced by pieces like Mortise and Tenon Arch, which I see in relationship to the careful connections of Carol Bove or Marcius Galan. However I am also still practicing social sculpture, for which I draw on artists like Pedro Reyes and Michael Rakowitz.
In my project Metaphysician, Heal Thyself, I reproduced the psychopharmacological scenario. I created forms for intake, for self-evaluation, and for prescription. I took the role of the “Metaphysician”, meant to mimic the psychiatrist. I held meetings with patients and prescribed medication. The medications were hand-made sugar pills in custom designed packaging. In my reproduction of the medical scenario the directness of the encounter, my non-professional status, and the individualized nature of each prescription made the official scenario legible as cold, removed, and systematic.
In my architectural reproductions, I take for granted that all material things are, in their very form, shot through with ideas, promises, and politics. Furniture and architecture are the subjects of this body of work because they are the most embedded of “things” of daily living, and are therefore effective in subtly naturalizing ideas. I reproduce fragments of architecture and abstract them to challenge the authority and “naturalness” of the world as it is presented. I warp architecture to point to other ways the world could be built. I isolate balconies and staircases to highlight the politics of ownership, mass address, and surveillance they embody. I dramatize the way the hierarchy functions spatially by heightening the inaccessible, singular, and protected nature of the balcony. They reflect on the absent figures who occupy elevated spaces like papal balconies and high rise penthouses.
Reimagining the objects and scenarios of everyday life is necessary and possible because the form of the world is produced, not given. Since the form is not given, then it is not permanent, natural, or even necessarily logical. That the world is made also means that I, or anyone, can build it. What we build, however contingent, matters. Form and material “speak” and the formation of selves is not immune to this speech: we understand our social roles from architecture, from clothing, from systems of transportation. Forms matter, and matter forms and informs us at levels material, symbolic, metaphorical, and psychological. My work draws on contemporary theory regarding the behavior of objects on subjects. I, along with many contemporary artists, have been drawn especially to Arjun Appadurai and Bill Brown, as well as to Tim Ingold and Timothy Morton. Stemming from my interest in Thing Theory and Object Oriented Ontology, I am drawn toward formal sculpture as evidenced by pieces like Mortise and Tenon Arch, which I see in relationship to the careful connections of Carol Bove or Marcius Galan. However I am also still practicing social sculpture, for which I draw on artists like Pedro Reyes and Michael Rakowitz.