My dream is that art be beautiful and communicative, sublime but also accessible. I believe in art that conveys objective assertions and not only subjective states, that is about ideas and not only sensation. I believe in seriousness and humor and that art should contain its own contradiction and critique. And that art is the collective surplus of history.
Since 2010, I have made unique collage works from found photographs – pictures that are concise, bold, colorful and delineated in the tradition of political posters and print advertisements. I make small collages with small pieces using found photos (mock ups) – sometimes mounted on canvas, giant collages with giant pieces using enlargements printed on etching paper and pencil drawings.
This philosophically and politically charged work utilizes, inter alia, classical art and architecture within a contemporary context. My background in philosophy and law substantially informs my praxis. I recognize that if my iteration of the classical tradition is to be successful, there must be a break between that tradition’s formal appearance and the various cultural, religious and authoritarian purposes it may have served in the past. In this way, classical forms may be recycled for current needs, and radical formalism might be the inspiration for a new radical politics.
In order to achieve this formal and ideological break, I juxtapose historical and art history imagery with visuals from popular culture, technology, science and science fiction, and I revel in, and at the same time satirize, philosophical and political hubris and grandiosity through the use of surreal and absurd settings and scale. I’m further able to achieve this break by making pictures that work as “floating signifiers”: works that can be interpreted through the lenses of viewers’ various and sometimes divergent ideologies. The result is that these works (and the process of making them) upset or call into question the worldview of viewer (and artist).
Titan’s Pearl, 2021
