ART STATEMENTS
STOP. LOOK. REFLECT… Living in New York City for over 20 years, I never cease to be mesmerized by the juxtaposition between the peaceful sky and the hustle and bustle of the concrete jungle below. The mirrored sky-scrapers scattered across the city reflect these two worlds, blending them together, creating a portal between the two. I use the mediums of light, etching, drawing and mixed media to explore this synthesis. The result is so visceral that I demand the viewer to stop, take a moment to slow down in this fast-pace world full of distractions.
“LIGHT SERIES” are composed of stacking multiple clear sheets where a three-dimensional floating image reveals itself through the manipulation of illumination, temperature and refraction. The subject matter is elevated to its spiritual essence. Without the light source the image cannot exist.
“URBAN NATURE/ HAUTE COUTURE” is a series of dreamscapes created with re-appropriated materials. The materials are essential due to the way they react with Light. For example, the light refracts off the thousands of staples, duct tape and pipes like sun hitting water. But absorbs into the flocking and recycled paper creating voids. With a fresh approach to the oldest techniques of stitching, pinning and weaving a new illusion of depth and layering is presented. My intent is to create a contemplative space and pay tribute to Art and Fashion’s long standing relationship, which I experienced first-hand in Paris working in the Chanel Studio.
The process throughout the different mediums is meditative and self-informing. The piece reveals itself and each work is unique. I explore a universe in which forms continually verge on collapse and rearrangement, creating a constant flux. There is a visual tension between harmony and chaos, but at the heart of the movement lies stillness, the ‘SPACE BETWEEN’, where the spectator can slow down, catch their breath and reflect.
IN THE WOODS
Intuition and imagination play a significant role in this show. Memories of childhood, cloned school girls occupy a lawless world. These girls, almost in a trance like state, are staged in a primordial forest. They are consumed with dark romantic scenarios of pagan rituals, sacrifices and exorcisms. They hover between a fantastical world full of wonderment and disintegration of order, ruled by dark forces.
Growing up, I made sense of the world through fairy tales and imagination. I studied Lord of the Flies and the Grimm Tales were read to me by my mother. I found these stories both terrifying and intriguing. This work is at times autobiographical, but the impact is universal; good versus evil, handling infancy and memory in its fantastical dimension shared by everyone. I place the viewer in an intermediate world between dream and wakefulness, between a childs nightmare and Fairy Tale.
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INDUSTRIAL NATURE
“Urban Nature” series explores a universe in which forms continually verge on collapse and rearrangement, creating a constant flux. The work osculates between macro and micro cosmos, spiraling in and out of control. Their energy is only stopped by the paper's edge and at the heart of this disorienting movement, lies stillness.
These playful geometric and circular patterns give rise to question whether they are something grown or man made. The internal structure and logic of these images unfolds over time, through successive layers, painting and burning.These mass produced pieces of cardboard, found on the streets of New York, are embellished with pearls and iridescent thread. I am interested in the intersection of commerce and culture, shifting back and forward between industrial and organic.
RANDOM GRACE, GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN
This work work transforms straightforward evocations of nature into expressions of human emotions. The line in the work is influenced by the rhythms in music and my love for retro furniture.
The obsessive use of the sphere carries the suggestion of movement and circulation. The floating forms and super saturated color are an extension of painting. Some sculptures possess a childlike, romantic innocence. This work is the call of memory, sustaining the vision of childhood in the face of the ongoing assault of age. To me, childhood is the time when the invisible world of the imagination seemed as concrete and plausible as nature.
Through the use of pastel colors evoking candies and baby clothes, the viewer’s first impression is that of a child finding a new toy, desiring to touch it and bring it to their mouth. The dream-like ‘candy field’ of bulbous forms on stems is intended as a hallucinatory field of flowers, but it also operates as an ironic reference to the oral fixations underpinning contemporary consumer culture.Sensuality guides the relationship between the work and the spectator creating a much more immediate contact through the senses of sight, touch and taste.
In this series I choose to take everything (subject or style) from my own subconscious and impulses. My inspiration is fantasy and I know that nostalgia is doing its ironic work.
FABERGE / IMPERIAL
“Imperial”, hovers between a fantastical world full of wonderment, and the disintegration of order. I place the viewer in an intermediate world, between a child’s nightmare and fairy tale.
The red varnish used on the shell of the egg refers to blood, danger, love, life. From afar the delicate brass formations and Swarovski crystals will refract the surrounding light bringing the piece alive. The overall effect will reference the jeweled Faberge Egg. Approaching the egg the mosaic of reflecting pieces reveal themselves to be brass bullets. The egg suspended within the violent ammunition creates a delicate tension between life and death, love and loss, desire and fear.
“IMPERIAL”, title of the piece, is referencing the most famous of the Faberge Eggs (1885 to 1917), which were commissioned by the Russian Tsars, especially the story of Nicholas II, who gave the eggs as Easter Gifts to his wife to show his love for her. Yet tragedy ensued when the whole family came to a violent end by being shot during the Russian Revolution.
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