ARTIST STATEMENT

We look to (and at) images to find information: practical, aesthetic, erotic, and points between or overlapping. We are often seduced; we believe the photograph’s illusory diorama of a point in time, the diagram or chart’s authoritative organization of fact. My primary concern is to re-imagine the human body - in relation to its own assumed/perceived structure, as well as to “others” (other bodies, spaces, systems). In my montage based work, each image is the intersection of two layers: one a figure photographed with limited control (underwater or in a pitch dark studio), the other a found photograph or textbook illustration. In combining two often contradictory vocabularies, I am hoping to subvert their ostensible subject while harnessing their respective power(s). The goal is a meaning beyond or between the boundaries of their individual language: the authority of the scientific illustration, the inscribed ideals of the classical art reference, the sentimentality or “family values” of the vernacular found photograph. Juxtaposed to the metaphoric submerged figure, a jangling dialog is created that ranges from the reinforcing to the ridiculous. In the more recent work that separates these layers out into multiple panel sequences, the complicating component of oblique narrative replaces that of the ambiguous blending of montage. In either (and any) case: can we finally see more than we know?