Nominated by Northern Illinois University I create objects because I want them to inform me. My work supervises the fragile relationship between boredom and distress. I deal with insecurities, fears of death, and the threat of lingering vacancies by focusing these menaces into a collection of psychological props. When an object refuses to reassure or narrate my subjectivity, I reject it, finding relief only with the conception of a new one. Once I create something, I demand that it talks to me. A successful prop will tell me who I am. I interrogate the object until I absorb its perspective, then I can take my new attitude and apply it to the next piece I create. My work is about manufacturing objects that feel estranged from the materials and products that they are representing. I contaminate an object with the quality of others as a means to defeat expected function, denying the object of its practical obligations and co-opting it into an inanimate family of black sheep. Image: Foaxm (Self Portrait as Counterfeit), 2014.
LAUNCH Invitational
