A televised championship golf game, an abandoned piece of playground equipment, an online store that synthetically produces social trends to sell cheap clothes; these things are all crafted with the consumer in mind. My current body of work is focused on the deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction of products created with the intention of being consumed, whether physical, digital or conceptual, and their relationship to the consumer and myself.
I identify the key visual symbols of the product by asking myself questions and finding the answers through philosophical contemplation and in-depth research. How was the product conceived and manufactured? How was it advertised? What is the general consumer's interpretation of it?
Based on my findings, I manipulate media and ideas which are referential to aspects of the product I wish to transform. I do this visually and auditorally with 3d modeling, oil painting, sound art, and sculptural methods. These time based, exploratory processes are in conjunction with my contemplation towards the product on a personal level. What is my interpretation of the product? How have I tied it to family, memories and ideas that are specific to my own mind, and how do I resolve these connections?
I am left with a deconstructed pile of partially resolved, confusing perspectives. The conjunction comes from esoteric iconography, systems, and practices, like the steps of Alchemical Transformation. I research into not just the literal alchemical elements of the physical product (if it is physical), but also interpretive, systematic connections I make between alchemical iconography and findings within my exploration of the product. I need a resolution of the original, unprocessed chemical composition of materials that represents the previous resolutions I came to understand. A change to something that symbolizes my mental deconstructive process, and how I want my theoretical ideas towards the product to be portrayed in the piece is the key, finalizing step to my process. Alchemy’s nature is to transcend metaphysical and temporal processes of understanding; once this step is complete, all conclusions and parts are commensurated into something digestable to the viewer. I am able to express resolutionary, theoretical reconstruction and what it took to get me there.
This deconstructive approach serves as mitigation to what I see as one of the biggest sociological threats to my generation. Our development was in conjunction with that of global connectivity on the internet, where a new, rejective awareness of consumerism came to light. In order to stay one step ahead of our criticisms, corporations began to integrate into society and influence us internally. This spurred the creation of an online art movement that has rarely been directly identified, centered around the reaction to corporate influences in our lives- usually through what marketable products and trends they create in an attempt to assimilate with us. This movement can be seen in the prevalence of metamodern and reactionary themes within the ideascape: sampling in music, reaction videos, and online micro-labeled “aesthetics” with sets of rules and guidelines. People are only partially aware of this movement, and this unawareness causes a consistently observable contradiction between criticism towards consumerism, and blatant indulgence in it.
It may have begun online, but now, in my everyday life, I see myself and my peers struggling to separate our true selves from static, visual archetypes; the result of years of online conditioning to develop a marketable persona. My artistic process is a weapon against my own oblivious, disorganized nature, ultimately allowing me to separate my true self and my perception of the outer world from the superficiality of our metamodern nightmare reality.
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