| For the last several years,
I have been making sculpture and installations engaging the
peculiarities of the judeo/christian legacy. The religious images
which were once an assumed vocabulary of western visual culture
have become strange and a bit archaic, but are still potent.
Using everything from levers to artificial hearts, I have found
mechanical metaphors particularly suited to thinking about the
functions of religion and faith. Many
pieces combine simple mechanisms with the body of the crucified
Christ--arguably the most familiar human image in western
society. For the most part, the devices I use are passive,
requiring the viewer to actually or mentally complete the
system. It is a sort of do-it-yourself approach involving
the labor of cranking, pumping, or simply turning on the gas.
The materials as well as
the allusions in my sculpture have the quality of being well
worn. The resins tend to be lumpy, yellowed, and encrusted
with insects. The machinery is mostly salvaged industrial
scrap, (a dental mold jig, parts of a photostat camera, a
car jack...), reconfigured into new devices while still retaining
a memory of some former use. |
