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“Each epoch always has and always needs its oppositions of destruction and construction.” Mondrian
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‘Burned Pallet’
Assemblage
50 x 50″
2011
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‘Box’
Assemblage
22 x 27″
2008
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‘Burned Pallet’
Assemblage
Detail
2011
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‘Folding Chairs’
Assemblage
24 x 37″
2009
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‘Human Lobster Trap’
Assemblage
63 x 93″
2009
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‘Folding Chairs’
Assemblage
28 x 41″
2008
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My recent work involves the literal collapse of three-dimensional objects and structures into the picture plane. This simple gesture – which is basically just taking things apart and putting them back together flat – is at the heart of what we think of as two-dimensional, representational art. I’m just doing it in a very literal way and whereas the whole point of Magritte’s pipe was that it wasn’t. The whole point of these objects is that they are what they are.
I work almost exclusively with found, utilitarian objects such as shipping pallets and boxes. I deconstruct the objects, cutting them into sometimes hundreds of abstract fragments before reassembling the pieces two-dimensionally. The negative space is filled with carefully fitted pieces of wood, creating a solid plane in which the object is trapped in a parody of its former perspective. The object’s concreteness is in direct contrast to the spatial illusionism of its composition not to mention the perceived autonomy of the picture plane.
By unifying the picture plane and the spatial environment, I’m trying to reconcile the dichotomy between pictorial and physical space, art and object, sculpture and painting. Sculpture has been defined as a three-dimensional object in space. These are three-dimensional objects in two-dimensional space and although they find themselves trapped, unable to perform their original functions, they remain active and productive on the level of our experience. These objects, which have always been thought of as means to other ends, have become ends in themselves. – Artist Statement
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