Artist Statement:

Totality: The Visual Dialectics of Interconnectivity and Instability

Contemporary Western society appears to revolve around the promotion of the individual. We are bombarded by advertisements that tell us how to be better individuals. This production of individualism began during the Renaissance with the creation of usurer’s capital; it continued through the rise of Protestantism and Enlightenment ideals which supported the expansion of capitalism. The focus on the subject-position has developed and continues to be a major focus in our contemporary society; which is exemplified by the rise of identity politics influenced by post-structuralist philosophy and neoliberalism. The rising focus on the subject-position has manifested in art movements such as “feminist art” or “chican@ art” that appeal to an identity category based on race, gender, class or sexuality. Many artists focus on developing the subject of their work; whether it be the artist as subject (identity categories) or symbols (subject matter). This happens through a symbol based narrative used to express the artist's individuality or ideas about an identity category. Identity is continuously forced upon individuals and is asserted by every interaction one has in the world. This diffusion and creation of identity categories is a product of the capitalist system.

Capitalism's production of these identity categories manifested in all facets of social life indicates the subsumption of every aspect of contemporary society, which upholds Marx's proposition that all social relations are mediated by capital and founded upon the wage relation¹. Our lives are directed by the sale and creation of commodities; even the art world has been subsumed by capital relations. It informs the materials, media and subject matter of an artist work. It also dictates how long an artist produces work, if the work doesn't sell, the artist might give up and stop making art. This influence of capital is described as the capitalist totality, the complete subsumption of all aspects of society.

My artistic practice is informed by both the rise in subjectivity and the capitalist totality. My work explores the totality of the picture plane, creating a unified field of vision, emphasizing the connection of everything contained within it. I'm approaching this investigation through large, 8'x3' charcoal and chalk drawings done on paper. The scale is large and narrow so that the viewer cannot take the whole work in at once to force the viewer to visually travel around the picture plane. To enable this movement I use line and various compositional arrangements. Everything in the picture plane is visually connected everything else through my use of line. This is directed by large sweeping movements of line or by altering the contrast of the black line on the white ground, or the white line on a black ground.

The subject is not the focus of my representational work. This is a key element that I need to make clear: I make use different symbols or subject matter to carry form; I do not use these symbols for their interpretation as symbols. I am not trying to construct a narrative. I want the viewer to focus on the form of my work and the subject. There are key overarching points of influence, normally taking the form of a recognizable figure or object. I use these representational forms as an anchor or a static element with which the lines react to, either by mimicking their form in repetitious movements carried throughout the picture plane or in opposition to the totalizing movements of the line. This is done to contrast the movement of the line with a static object.

I have rid my current work of these representational objects altogether and reduce the subject matter to few movements carried across the length of the paper. I found representational objects to be too limiting and did not allow the focus on composition I desired. I'm still working to contrast static anchor points with large sweeping indistinguishable movements of line. I bind these contrasts within various arrangements of the rule of thirds. These diagonal sweeps of value, traversing the picture plane interact with various oppositional movements in the composition, sometimes they will dissolve into one another or one will over take the other. I work on pushing and pulling various lines and compositional elements to into the foreground and background by dulling or sharpening the contrast. My work is a visual critique of the rising focus on the individual by reducing the subjectivity to a few ephemeral gestures devoid of appeals to identity or individualism.

1Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, Ernest Mandel, and Ben Fowkes. Capital. a Critique of Political Economy. London: Penguin in Association with New Left Review, 1990. Print.