What is my work about?
My sculptures appear as cartoons: distortions, extrusions, silhouettes, bad graphics. Made from industrially produced materials–metal and cast acrylic sheets–they simultaneously cite the tactile slang of architectural prototypes and fetish-toys. They are a combination of raw material and manipulated found objects: iron gates, wind chimes, chromed pipes, coins…a stripper pole, the roll cage from a demolition derby car. Abstracted; amputated; surfaces are fetishized with chrome, acid etch, fingerprints. Acrylics posture as rapid-prototyped stand-ins–at once illustrative and irrecoverable. I believe abstraction can propose a trans-mental emotional language, a type of communication that can be formal, affected, fantasized, violent, metaphoric, psychedelic…without shape shifting into a name-able thing. There is power in nameless things. Vague figures have a meaning as necessary and perfect as precise ones.
Artist Statement
I am interested in a dimension between perception, invention, and formal discipline; a site of wide associative patterns that simulate uncanny and hallucinatory experience. I work between sculpture and installation, staging sculpture-objects in environments influenced by the highly affected lighting of casinos, theatre, and diorama. The intentions and tenor of my sculpture-objects are congruent: quasi-mannerist models and caricatures of attitude—rotoscoped from emotion rather than image—that become exaggerated motifs of violence, anxiety, alienation, and the absurd. The exhibition is always a proposal for a wordless narrative—poetic, yet anti-linguistic; lurid, lucid.
CV
Education
2011
BFA The Cooper Union, New York NY
Solo Exhibitions
2014
Spells to Protect Against Unkind , Important Projects, Oakland CA
2011
The Flower Absent from All Bouquets, The Cooper Union, New York NY
Group Exhibitions
2014
The Grand Opening, Shoot the Lobster, New York NY
All the Food Is Poison, Bed-Stuy Love Affair, Brooklyn NY with Jeffrey Joyal
Ever Y Thing Zen, Jancar Jones, Los Angeles CA
Psycho-Somatic Addict-Insane, Interstate Projects, Brooklyn, NY
Four Drawings of a Farmer, Bureau, New York NY
Haute Surveillance, James Fuentes at Basilica, Hudson NY with Daniel Peterson & Andy Meerow,
2013
Turnkey of Forever After, Bed-Stuy Love Affair, Brooklyn NY
Smilers Delicatessen, Times Square, New York NY
2012
Ten Ten, Jason Alexander, New York NY
2011
Prop 3.141, 41 Cooper Gallery, New York NYwith Andrew Ross and Sam Ashford
2010
Rim Runner, The Cooper Union, New York NYwith Bailey Scieszka
Brown, The Cooper Union, New York NY with Bailey Scieszka and Emilie Gossiaux
Other
2013
RHM Foundation Nominee
2012
RHM Foundation Nominee
Edward Albee Foundation, Fellowship and Residency
2010
Benjamin Menschel Fellowship for Creative Inquiry, Grant
2007
Irma Guistino Weiss Fellowship, Grant (through 2011)
Full Tuition Scholarship, The Cooper Union