My practice is one that reflects, when I say this it sounds simple, but I would argue that all of our practices reflect.  Reflection is both a physical and metaphorical activity.  I use reflection as a starting point, based around my personal theoretical writings which I call juxtapositional aethestics.

            Recently I would have told you I make images, and these images are derived from my opinions and experiences of historical and found artworks, fed through biological, digital, and sculptural processes to try to squeeze an outcome out of interaction and an examination of the mediation of technology.  I strive for the engagement of a community when I think about art.  To me art is community.  Without this engagement the meaning is lost, the meaning that flows from personal expression or opinion that passes from one object or image into another person’s perception.  This continuity of exchange is what I believe we call contemporary art.  Currently I would say my art practice is enveloped in writing about my art practice which evolved from exercises and reading art theory and becoming increasingly more confused about why I was doing this thing I called art.  I concluded that I needed my own art theory to clear my head and so my personal art theory goes like this: Queue Sweeping Declaration

            All art - (just to be clear: I believe that art is what artists make, and artists are those people whom artists, critics, curators, and gallerists, acknowledge as artists.) - So… All art is made in contrast against or in complement to the historical.  And could also be both. 

            Due to unconscious or conscious cues in the shape, forms, sounds, colors, and compositions of work, we propagate “art” forward in history as either a direct contrast, which I call juxtepositional, or symmetrical compliment of what has come before.  Therefore: I see a chicken, I draw the chicken, and have completed a pleasing symmetrical composition of the real chicken.  This chicken drawing is seen by my classmate at school who enjoys drawing as well, and attempts to draw a chicken, creating another chicken drawing with a similar composition.  Another friend of mine on the bus sees both chicken drawings and decides that they don’t like chickens, or drawings, and steals the chicken drawing from me and burns it on the sidewalk after we leave the bus as a dramatic performance piece, creating what I would posit is a contrasting or “juxtepositional artwork”.  Angry at my friend over the theft and burning of my drawing, despite its use in an important performance work, I resolve to spend the next sixty years executing exacting chicken drawings.  These drawings eventually are shown together as a retrospective after my death, including a re-creation of the initial chicken drawing burning performance.  These events further canonize my contributions to art and culture, and become themselves symmetrical art creations as they mirror the idea of the initial chicken drawing story, projecting that idea further into the future by aesthetical lensing.  A propagation of a focal point of visual culture that is exponential in nature.   In this example, we must also appreciate that a re-creation of a performance changes subtly from a juxtepositional work into a symmetrical one despite the originals juxtepositional stance.

            Sadly, my friend who also enjoys drawing and drafted the other chicken drawing on the bus (much better than mine I might say) did not have the good fortune of being bullied by our friend the  performance artist and so was never recognized as being the creator of exquisite chicken drawings, despite having also created chicken drawings of superior quality for most of their lives.

            The advantage of a juxtepositional artwork is that it raises questions of validity, opposition, truth, equality, justice, fairness and other political and social issues.  It also is challenging, likely requiring knowledge of the artworld and art history, as the artist creating the work likely knows something about these things and is reacting to it.  Its inherent weakness is its destructive, and oppositional stance.  The weakness of the juxtepositional work is also the symmetrical artworks strength:  We are simply used to seeing it.  When one is used to seeing something, or at least sees something a lot, we tend to grow fond of it.  Think of coffee, or the sky.  If the sky turns red, and fills with smoke, we are unhappy, and become stressed and perhaps angry.  But, we also are intellectually activated by the nature of the aberrant change. “Why is the sky red?”  is the first of a cascade of questions that would likely occur to a person, at least a person who ventured outside or checked the internet on that day.  Follow up questions such as: “Is something on fire?”, “Is there an alien invasion?”, “Where is my phone?” would eventually lead the person to a network of people or machines that would inform about cause and appropriate response.  These interactions do, however, lead to discussion.  Which I again argue is the whole point of contemporary art.

            All of my current work, despite its disparate forms is about this idea, and how to use this idea to confront the dialogue of art and culture so that it becomes more aware of its structures, bias, and historical context.  

            A word on art from outside the art world.  Juxtepositional art that is uninformed shall be termed:  “Coincidental Juxteposition” it might be intriguing but by accident.  One might ask why this matters.  It doesn’t, except that some people need to make a living from not accidents.