Artist Statement
July 2022
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I’m making art.
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I often make art about art.
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Sometimes curators are right.
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I’m a serious man.
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Whitney Biennial is just eh.
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“Art is too serious to be taken seriously.” Ad Reinhardt
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All great art is horseshit.
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I believe in general death but not in the death of ptg.
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Like Duchamp, I’m playing chess.
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It is what it is.
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It is not what it is not.
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It’s not pretty.
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I promise to make a fabulous ptg tomorrow.
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“Make them abound with nonsense.” Sol LeWitt
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All questions to my professors.
Artist Statement
April 2022
I am an artist who plays with the idea of how we construct meaning in our minds when we approach a work of art. The fundamental aspects of painting such as the figure ground relationship, physical properties of paint, or texture are in the work, therefore when the spectator sees the paintings, they are certain - they stand in front of a painting and nowhere else. Paint becomes a vehicle of an actual experience of being in the present moment. However, the paintings are thought-provoking, they question and examine the very mechanism of how the form (such as unplanned graphic marks) leads to the content, and challenge people's preconceived perceptions of reality. Whether it be a visual abstract vocabulary that I’ve developed over the years or text-based work, the work is heavily coded and holds a lot of historical references.
Through those codes and references, there are a number of possibilities that the viewer can come up with while looking at my paintings. For instance, when you see the words - “Duchamp is just a guy,” you can detect images of Marcel Duchamp, some of his artworks—or if you do not know who he is, you still can imagine a guy in your head. There are a number of possibilities that you can come up with, and it is different for each individual. And then, when you confront a painting with unrecognizable elements, there are tons of options that you can come up with including text in the realm of that abstract vocabulary.
So you dance. It becomes like a waltz by Franz Schubert. Sometimes you have to step back to see the full painting, sometimes you want to step closer to see its texture. You move between the visual and the descriptive, between the concrete and the imagined, and the dance never stops.
Artist Statement for Solo Exhibition at Massillon Museum
January 2022
I Promise to Make a Fabulous PTG Tomorrow
Referencing art history, studio practice and our culture, the ideas behind the artwork demonstrate how humor can question and change things that surround us in this current moment. A moment that also happens to be dominated by any number of existential threats, including an ongoing pandemic.
The two bodies of work, if you go by appearance, are a combination of mixed media paintings that pulls from a vocabulary of artmaking established since World War II. It quotes and plays with, in particular, the strategies of the original Conceptual movement and the later Conceptual Abstraction painters. While the first body of work poses the question of how we look at paintings and construct images in our heads, the second body of work deals with how we create meaning. A selection of the statements are taken out of their context and recontextualized on canvas in order to invest them with meaning and ask the viewer important questions. For instance, “What is art? What is the purpose of art? Or what is a successful painting?”
The paintings are earnest in examining how a painting can dance between the conceptual and the material. By dealing with formal and fundamental aspects such as figure-ground relationship, line and texture, the paintings stand as a reminder that first of all, they are paintings. However, along with the formal elements of the artwork, mental activity is a crucial part of the paintings. There is thinking within the work. And a painting’s materiality leads to this thinking. Thus, the form and the content of the paintings become interconnected in an ongoing dance where they both depend on each other.
In relation to this moment, as we live in unprecedented times, the works contemplate the idea of humor as relief and release. How good, how wonderful, to smile or chuckle as the old lions of art history get a tiny bit of what’s coming to them or the perpetual artist’s self promise to do better in the next piece. I Promise to Make a Fabulous PTG Tomorrow.
Artist Statement
April 2021
In my paintings, I tend to use abstract forms to develop a pictorial language. The viewer may notice two main elements which are engaged in a conversation with each other. These elements are figure and ground. The figure-ground relationship provokes seeing the space within a picture. It deals with the idea of how we see things in space and the world around us. Thus it provides mental freedom for the viewer’s ability to imagine.
The hard edge shapes dispersed around in confrontation with the soft edge stripes on the background. The drips make the observer aware of the paint itself and its physical properties. It reminds the beholder, that first of all, my paintings are paintings. As well as it holds a historical reference to Jackson Pollock and demonstrates the history of how the paintings have been made. My handling of the paint shows a human hand and conveys the idea that nothing is perfect in this world. The juxtaposition of colors in my work leads the viewer to different emotional responses.
I am aware that the elements of the paintings reference something real while being non-real. Meaning that all the elements in my paintings have their associative powers that create an image in the spectator’s mind. These associations might embrace the ideas about the natural world, of the presence in this universe, thought process, memory, or digital experience of contemporary life. Thus, subjective universality of abstraction helps me to open an image for everybody, even if the pictorial language is unfamiliar to the viewer.