Artist
EVENT: Dyslexic Symmetries at Gallery Unpublished, located in the lobby of the graphic design firm Methodologie (808 Howell St, Sixth floor, 623-1044). Through Feb 7.
I'm curious about the title of your show--Dyslexic Symmetries. What does it refer to? "You know that faces are not quite symmetrical. And we spend more time looking at faces than at art. Conceptually the history of art mirrors who and what we are, but imperfectly. I'm interested in the idea of art mirroring society. The key to what I'm doing lies in the mediated image of the world, and I'm positioning art as part of it."
The mediated image is the artist-chosen image? "It's simply a manmade image. Our experience with it isn't direct, but mediated by someone else, and then interpreted. All these things we see--billboards, mail, the Internet, magazines--affect how we look at the world and speak to our fears and desires. Traveling in less-mediated environments, such as Africa, brought that home for me. Then there's a more minimal aspect that I'm attracted to also--an aesthetic, formal one. Minimal art didn't make sense to me until I was in New York this year. I walked into a warehouse where everything was painted white. It felt good after being bombarded with visuals, a respite from all the images."
Your art isn't particularly minimal, though. "Well, I'm attracted to a lot of things. I experience symmetry and minimalism without being programmatic about it. We have this serial mentality, especially in institutions. Something you wrap your mind around, but art is more chaotic than that. Some of the best art has no direction or purpose--it just happens. If you start with an idea and then make art, it ends up illustrative. I prefer the freedom of not being programmatic about it."
I'm interested in the fact that you've incorporated natural images into your work--a far cry from the magazine ads you usually use. "It's the flip side of the mediated image, the natural part. It's a challenge to integrate the two, but it makes more sense to contrast them. I like disjunctive things; they make you think. Art can be seductive and beautiful at first, but should go beyond that."
