I have a show of a small version of my Cabinet of Contemporary Neolithic Wonders opening at Jean Amador’s High Studio in Moorpark on January 5th, 2007. Opening reception January 12th 6pm – 8pm. I hope you are able to join me there and experience some of my work. The picture above is an installation of the exhibit in the Kwan Fong Gallery at CLU in Summer of 2006.
To some extent my work is a rejection of the treatment of nature by contemporary artists. In this irrational period of post-history, the new age of reconstruction and revision, we look for art that reflects our time and celebrate pickled animal corpses in vitrines, tents and soiled underwear, moulded plastic boxes. Works by many contemporary artists reflect a profound cultural discomfort with the natural world, demonstrating a desire to observe death in vitrine, and an exclusion of nature. Although dramatic, Hirst’s dissected animal corpses in formaldehyde represent nature ravished, not a mother honoured.
My work attempts the opposite; reaching for the relationship of our ancestors to the earth we live upon. The exhibit is arranged so viewers need to stretch up to peer into boxes and bend down to find objects that were attached to sculptures within small openings. It was my intention to invite the visitors to sensually, intellectually and ritually engage with the art.
We will share Neolithic bread and mead with you at the opening reception.
Visitors will observe an emphasis on ambiguity in the titling of and commentary on the works. This was an intentional device to make visitors aware of the positioning of the works within the vesicas of artefact and art object, ancient and modern, creativity and scholarship. By introducing ambiguous interpretations where one would normally expect to find definitive commentary I intended to put readers off balance, to create a sense of disorientation that would help to generate a liminal state of mind. In the same vein of thought, the printed material was placed at varying heights on the gallery walls, in some cases quite low to the ground, so that readers had to bend over to read them, encouraging their physical interaction with the exhibit.
I’m making plans to be at the opening reception. Free bread and mead, I love art. Something I find interesting is this dichotomy of constructed elements (shaped and planed wood, plaster) and the primitive inclusions put into them, like an archeologist’s dig.