Art Statement
Eroticism, surrealism, and sensuality induce and incite my art. My visual language jubilates with these themes, using mixed media—painting, drawing, and photography—to speak about opposing energies within the human psyche that center around the erotic. My art is deeply rooted in eroticism, a concept I strive to redefine. As an artist and writer, my role is not just to challenge the superficial, over-sexualized notions of eroticism prevalent in the 21st century but to advocate for poetic alternatives. I believe it is my responsibility to steer the conversation about eroticism away from its purely sexual aspects and towards a more philosophical discourse.
Over the last few years, I have been working on the potential of glass and mirrors, particularly mirrored paint on film, to express my ideologies and philosophies regarding opposites. I focus on drawings that bring about tensions and paradoxes of masculine and feminine energies, i.e., Yin and Yang anima and animus—using the human body as a reference point, working simultaneously in figurative and abstract modes. For example, the figurative body is constructed, deconstructed into abstract forms, and then returned to the representational. I continued to work this way until both elements conjoin and a frisson of contradictions produce erotic tensions. Pregnant with contradictions and always on the move, the morphing of genders transitioning from one to another is in constant flux as the body decides which gender it will eventually form. These contradictions are ghost-like gestures in the background and simultaneously in the foreground.
Introducing glass and mirrors into the work equation takes the concepts laid out in the drawings into the submerged worlds of physiology, biology, and the subconscious. The reflective mirror and defective glass draw and seduce the viewer into the work, making them an integral part of the journey toward the other, i.e., the imagination and the subconscious. The materials represent different aspects of time and memory in the human experience. The mirror presents 'real-time' via reflection: the photographs illustrate the past. Drawing and painting connect the past and present, engaging the viewer with the eroticized body as a guide.
Where does this lead the viewer, and why the eroticized body? An erotically charged body's physiology heightens the senses, opening the body up to experiences that would be otherwise inaccessible. The sensualized body becomes a conduit between the conscious and subconscious world, a portal to an internal, surreal landscape where form, thoughts, and gestures are yet to be fully developed, specific genders are not yet distinguished, and the past lives with the unborn future.
The writer Anais Nin discusses the conscious and subconscious in her art, psychology being the interrelationship that links both, and how she strives to keep the passageways open—moving from one dimension to another—to connect, not divide. I envision my work in the same way. My art shimmers with the ghosts of the subconscious. These living ghosts affirm one's memories while making new ones. This layering can leave a residue of melancholy when the transient nature of the work moves from one world to the next and echoes the transience of the human passage of time. It also gives the art a freshness and originality that keeps evolving. These artworks represent what the subconscious is to the conscious mind through the exploration of opposites and the curiosity of the human psyche.
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