Abstract:
The cross-section seamlessly cuts through enclosed bodies or machines, a diagrammatic/infographic technique that exposes the interior functioning of a system, revealing processes that are often non-representative of outer appearances. The cross-section channels form a focused directional flow that is projected beyond its spatial limits. Large-scale structural fabrication is combined with drawing, writing and audio work, which follows automatic and intuitive processes. These differing rhythms of production are furthered in the use of food products – caught in a state of delayed decay – sealed within resin. Food-based items (dried shrimp, pastry, passionfruit) move from ornamentation to become incorporated within sculptural surfaces and made to mimic drawing materials. Periodically timed audio produces variations in ambience and synergy. Grotesque materiality is thought of in its relationship to the American philosopher Alphonso Lingis’s discussion of sensuality and the phenomenology of the fluid. By exploring sensuality as a method for the individual’s transgression, an extensive malleability is discovered beyond cultural complicity, aligning bodily dynamics with cycles of environment fluid exchange. The use of dangerous products of industry such as rust, fiberglass and other toxic materials becomes an extension of the dangerous elements within nature- rock faces, poison mushrooms, swamp gas, lava flows etc. In this way danger/toxicity is considered alongside the oversensitive body that is assured safety and security. The work attempts to discuss the desires for personal and collective escape (even adolescent desires for purple mountains and tropical fish) in the face of a culture where the various channels of meaning are congested by the accumulations of repressed desire and economic distortion. In this way the channel form comes to reflect both the cyclical confines of progress or like a waterslide or escape tunnel exerts an exhilarating directional force. The space is explored in a schematic sense, towards the expression of an idea; in this way it functions on the level of exhibition and utilizes techniques of entertainment, and advertisement. Simultaneously it attempts to excavate a more reflexive position within the various levels of spatial, sensual and informational arrangement whereby objects and ideas are implicated within larger projects of exchange and action. In this way the works become symbolic of segments of an idea while also suggesting some kind of potential/future useability.