Statement on Work
This set of works presents a small pantheon, to give figure to some forces and currents we swim in today.
Here the word figure is doing some extra lifting. It's not simply shape, or an allegorical device. Here it is a drawing out, a prefiguration of a presence from another plane of existence. I am guided by Erich Auerbach's writings on the concept of figura, which he uses to study Dante’s Inferno. He offers a startling view of Dante’s artistic project, to yield a perspective on the figures of human history across time. In placing his contemporaries and predecessors in the realms of Hell, Dante gives figure to their eternal characters and destinies: “their appearance in the other world is a fulfillment of their appearance on earth, their earthly appearance a figure of their appearance in the other world.” In this sense, a figure is a vision of its fulfillment, its own truth.
With these works I am also interested in looking at posture and poses. I think attention to these subjects in art could use some recuperation. In India and China in the 7th and 8th centuries, certain bodhisattva sculpture exhibit a surprising naturalism. In their very felt features and poses, down to the slouch of their hips, they sidestep a merely totemic presence, to pull the demigod into our world. Part of my inquiry with this work is to ask how comportment can yield a worldview, and pull the otherworldly into our timeline of lived, human experience.
Here the word figure is doing some extra lifting. It's not simply shape, or an allegorical device. Here it is a drawing out, a prefiguration of a presence from another plane of existence. I am guided by Erich Auerbach's writings on the concept of figura, which he uses to study Dante’s Inferno. He offers a startling view of Dante’s artistic project, to yield a perspective on the figures of human history across time. In placing his contemporaries and predecessors in the realms of Hell, Dante gives figure to their eternal characters and destinies: “their appearance in the other world is a fulfillment of their appearance on earth, their earthly appearance a figure of their appearance in the other world.” In this sense, a figure is a vision of its fulfillment, its own truth.
With these works I am also interested in looking at posture and poses. I think attention to these subjects in art could use some recuperation. In India and China in the 7th and 8th centuries, certain bodhisattva sculpture exhibit a surprising naturalism. In their very felt features and poses, down to the slouch of their hips, they sidestep a merely totemic presence, to pull the demigod into our world. Part of my inquiry with this work is to ask how comportment can yield a worldview, and pull the otherworldly into our timeline of lived, human experience.