Current Balance (Glenlily Version)
2017 Camouflage ratchet straps, site specific photograph
Dimensions Variable
2017 Camouflage ratchet straps, site specific photograph
Dimensions Variable
Following my interest in liminality, I began to investigate the concept of tension, it's a precarious force, but is neither good nor bad: too much and we break, too little and we won't stay up. With all recent events in the USA, people seem very tense, and it's as if the country is being being pulled apart. The underlying inequities inhered in the founding of the USA have, to a great extent, not been dealt with...
What are the tensions in our lives, what are the constructs that we buy into or that we fight against? I was looking for a way to demonstrate the foolishness of our predicament. In Tibetan Buddhism there is a belief that after death the soul can enter 3 different realms called Bardo. In this post death state one can achieve enlightenment by recognizing various illusions for being exactly that. I think this is a useful paradigm and I wanted to create a metaphorical device for recognizing our own foolishness.
Current Balance is a reproducable situation whereby a site is selected and the sky above is documented with a photograph, which is then suspended above viewers via camouflage ratchet straps. The camouflage ratchet straps set against the sky are an ironic stab at both the way we foolishly try to mask ourselves and hide, and also a stab at (faux) rural hypermasculinity and casual militarism currently in vogue. The photo of the sky may or may not actually blend into the sky depending the viewer’s position, it may or may not rip, but it's intended to represent both the hubris of trying capture the sky, the silliness of art, and the fragility of our illusions, both about nature and ourselves.
This work was shown in the 2017 Glenlily Gounds Sculpture show curated by Lacey Fekishazy
What are the tensions in our lives, what are the constructs that we buy into or that we fight against? I was looking for a way to demonstrate the foolishness of our predicament. In Tibetan Buddhism there is a belief that after death the soul can enter 3 different realms called Bardo. In this post death state one can achieve enlightenment by recognizing various illusions for being exactly that. I think this is a useful paradigm and I wanted to create a metaphorical device for recognizing our own foolishness.
Current Balance is a reproducable situation whereby a site is selected and the sky above is documented with a photograph, which is then suspended above viewers via camouflage ratchet straps. The camouflage ratchet straps set against the sky are an ironic stab at both the way we foolishly try to mask ourselves and hide, and also a stab at (faux) rural hypermasculinity and casual militarism currently in vogue. The photo of the sky may or may not actually blend into the sky depending the viewer’s position, it may or may not rip, but it's intended to represent both the hubris of trying capture the sky, the silliness of art, and the fragility of our illusions, both about nature and ourselves.
This work was shown in the 2017 Glenlily Gounds Sculpture show curated by Lacey Fekishazy
