Material Drift: Speculative Collage for an Uncertain Future
Material Drift: Speculative Collage for an Uncertain Future.
These mixed media collisions verge on haphazard material explosions but are in fact self-contained eddies of content and form, culled from a diverse material drift brimming with information. They are gritty hybrids that grow out from the wall like mutant art forms self-assembled from of waste and found materials.
I started this series while reading Octavia Butler's novel, Parable of the Sower, a dystopic science fiction novel written in 1993. The narrative voice put me in a frame of mind where it was no difficult task to consider the act of art making in a time of civilizational collapse. That's exactly where we are at. But these are joyous works of creative thrust (and trust) that expand into (and out of) the materials they are made of. Cereal boxes, aluminum cans, Amazon bubble packs, bits (not bytes) in a ubiquity of commercial and consumer waste -- every piece a readymade with optic range that rivals the palettes of Hilma af Klint, Kerry James Marshall and Massacio, combined!
I call these works 'Smash Collage'. I propagate material collisions in search of hybrid, idiosyncratic forms that are full of personality and information. All active edges and complex layering, each piece is equal parts composition and decomposition. Scraps and fragments from commercial packaging hold their place as cultural signifiers or strange haikus moored in the subsurface.
