"Overlook"
Reality is ambiguous to the core and is in no way static. It comprises
ongoing, overlapping transitions from one state to another and one
plane to another. As such, no appeal can be made to external sources
in order to grasp reality. The only way to understand reality is
through one's own experience and sensory apparatus. This series
of work is a meditation on the nature of reality, how we encounter
it and the thin, easily-permeable membranes which separate one plane
or dimension of reality from another.
Several devices are used to signify the membrane: the wall,
the pages of a book, the white surfaces of plaster and the juxtaposition
of different conditions of representation. These skins cover and
divide disparate modes of perception, location and being. Walls
separate inside from outside and the meetings of separate forms
define negative and positive space.
The pages of a book, a repository of knowledge, meet at
geometric, right angles and accordion outward from the center in
"The Beginning". In the middle of the composition is the image of
an open mouth pronouncing a word. To the sides of the composition
the sculpture evolves from three-dimensional form to plain empty
surface. The image transforms from organic form to geometric form
before disappearing into emptiness symbolizing the eternal cycle
of questions: What was in the beginning? What is emptiness? What
is reality?
"Passage (Door)" and "Silence(Zipper)" exist in both two
and three-dimensional space, giving the impression of un-reality
in reality. They hint at the search for a way out of banal existence
or a way into a different dimension. Seemingly intractable, opaque
surfaces turn out to be permeable.
"Revelation (Tear)" features a wall-mounted sculpture of
an eye, a self-contained, independent object. It implies a reckoning
or a painful moment of encounter with the harsh reality of life.
No matter how much we try to preserve and protect our inner world,
reality finds a way to intrude, disturb and violate it. In this
piece, the teardrop is the result of this strong emotional shock.
In "Intersecting Senses", sensory organs evoke conduits
for various types of information. They help one transition from
the physical world to the spiritual while enabling the externalization
of our internal worlds. Their inherent intimacy prohibits the wall-mounted,
disembodied features from becoming estranged from their functions
and identified as 'objects'. They metaphorically transform the physical
space into the internal world of an organism which has the potential
to speak with its mouth and listen with its ears.
Representational form literally emerges from the Minimalist
serial unit of the block, becoming invested with symbolic meaning
beyond the quotidian. An ear smoothly transitions from the white
surface of the wall, narrating a conceptual transition from Minimalism
to representational embodiment. The process of making the work and
projecting a visual idea into an inchoate material is a metaphor
for the ineluctable search for meaning through engagement with the
phenomenal world.
While different sensory orders come together through the
experience of the installed objects, multiple levels of social spaces
superimpose one another and seemingly incongruous forms of recent
practices converge. The space of the gallery acts not only as a
physical container for secular experience but also as a locale for
transformational experience to be described and perhaps, to occur.
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