Kinetic Catatonia: A Visual Clamor for Words
Abstract
My work begins and ends with a struggle to articulate. Having found textual
language too rusted a tool for the pure act of articulation, I turn to a visual one in
my search for definition. I use drawing, lithography, and oil painting to illustrate
and then haphazardly bastardize semiology's pawns as I build distorted
compositions of the decomposed.
In this phony Odyssey, I hold the Trinity as a manifestation of the complexities of
existence as well as an unattainable target that keeps me forever searching. My
interest in the Trinity led to an interest of sign. With this academic pursuit in
hand, I isolated all of the signs that I had been hitherto using, unbeknownst to me,
and from them formed a lexicon. This lexicon forms the basis of this year’s work,
literally and conceptually. It focuses on specific objects that have physically or
metaphorically failed to realize their own potential. I isolate and rearrange this
lexicon via printmaking, and in my paintings, I allow the symbols to melt into
each other, creating a visual disarray similar to the frantic paralysis of
inarticulation. In this translation from distorted yet incarnate symbols to strangled
and meaningless forms, I hoped to isolate my own inarticulation and inspire the
viewer to isolate their own. However, I found that by creating and destroying a
language, I had made room for another language to develop, separate from
myself. This new language reeks of the inarticulate as it takes hold over my
works.
In the end, I am willing to pretend that this alien language is mine. It is true that I
did not make it, but I facilitated it.
Description
Keywords
Art, Painting, Lithography