I materialize existential questions through painting and sculpture, creating an internal ecosystem of imagined realms and tokens.
Through my work in painting and sculpture, I materialize internal ecosystems of imagined realms and tokens to inquire into existential questions informed by escapism - one’s desire to pierce through the “hyperreality” of western consumerist culture. These systems evoke feelings of longing and ambiguity, a half-familiar world just past the threshold of the real. Otherwise expansive spaces contain barriers; curtains, frames, windows, or walls–putting the landscape, and thus the questions they pose, beyond reach.
Desire is weaponized, constructing a more digestible reality defined by willing ignorance from what we are otherwise compelled to understand. I wish to explore the cognitive dissonance of both indulging in distractions and enjoying the freedom found in truth.
Utilizing mediums such as drawing, painting, and sculpture allows me to explore this contradiction. Creating a strong relationship between the space a piece inhabits and how it physically relates to the viewer is essential. Dreamlike, illusory, and even metaphysical elements offer a symbol to the viewer, anchoring themselves within the reality within the canvas. Sculpture, in relief or in the round, offers a similarly honest expression of the emotions felt while investigating difficult truths, dimensionally more “present” to the viewer.
I hope to share a universal, felt visual language that explores and critiques the systems that bar us from complete autonomy and the desire we have for it.