With a process based in obsession, repetition, and subtle, gestural movements, I relentlessly search for an understanding of the ordered systems inherent in nature. The resulting creations dance the lines between the systematic, Conceptualist wall drawings of Sol LeWitt, while using the languages of Post-minimalism and Post-structuralism to deconstruct and confuse the signifiers and the signified. While in Post-minimalism and Post-structuralism, the author of the work is often reduced or even excised from the final object, my aesthetic is derived from the movement and gesture of a human hand, vis-à-vis Abstract Expressionism and Formalism, in order to hark back to the focused, obsessive, and repetitive nature required by myself to create objects that contain the transcendental aura of focused time and work. In essence, my aesthetic ad-
dresses the grid and strict geometry, similar to Peter Halley’s, and the systematic and participatory works of Sol LeWitt.

My work is aesthetically minimal and simple, where the time and focus required to create the piece bears as much importance as the actual physical medium. My mediums are chosen from mundane materials that have a sense of duality to them. For example, a utilitarian plastic adhesive which appears sensual and alluring. This ideology of dualist materials originally stemmed from my attraction to the untitled pencil sculptures of Tom Friedman, in which he uses a nearly uncountable number of common #2 pencils to create obsessively crafted objects that morph from everyday materials into transcendental objects.

My work serves as a document of the timely and escapist act of creating artwork with a meditation-like focus. A document that shows, in relation to Modernism’s unofficial mantra of “art for art’s sake,” an art object that is crafted from a “process for process’s sake.” In this document, process serves as a medium between a normal existence and one where banality and boredom become exis-
tential through subtlety, simplicity, and hyper-modernist ambiguity.

The final product of the thesis process will morph as my experience with my process continues to evolve, and my experience with the endless exploration of physical mediums will further drive my aesthetic. My process tends to direct me into works of a grandiose scale, similar to Color Field works that address issues of existentialism, transcendence, and spectacularity. Also, the final artwork will both co-exist with and engage “white cube art,” and issues surrounding the confusion of painting and objecthood. I am interested in the line where a painting starts competing for space in a room, and where sculptures start flattening from objects into paintings.

So as I continue on the path of the thesis timeline, I will further push my skills, patience, and thinking, to create an understanding of why I must retreat and meditate in this world of systems, sequences, and mathematical and natural patterns. Also, exploring how these various facets of nature (both urban and wild) can be further represented visually, as created by a discoverer and a fabricator of these systems.

I look forward to looking further.