 |
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
DATES: March 27- April 21, 2007 RECEPTION: Saturday, March 31, 2007 5-7pm |
ADDRESS: 511 West 25 Street, Suite 605, NYC HOURS: Tuesday - Saturday. 12 - 6 PM |
|
ARTIST STATEMENT
"This story energy somehow influences ... and the children are mended in one way or another."
Gerald Vizenor, The Heirs of Columbus
For the past several years my studio work has included an investigation of psycho symbolic development in western culture. This work relies significantly upon suggestions of the taboo, the infantile, and the obsessive in a parodic layering of images, sound, and textual references. My primary focus has involved an application of trauma theory to American cultural identity. It is the peculiarly haunting power of traumatic cause and memory that has intrigued me and which I attempt to pattern in my work.
Recently my work has moved from the more or less autobiographical into a broader consideration of trauma as a cultural phenomena. With Limping Down the Fence Line I explore the development of post-colonial identity structures within American Frontier communities (cowboy, Native American) - suggesting that within contemporary clokes of stereotypical identity lie shadows of personal and cultural history. Laurels of Conquest is one in a series of video installations I call Limping Down the Fence Line. This particular piece focuses upon the cyclic nature of life and death in the daily work of cowboys/cowgirls, that of handling cows. Here the metaphor inherent in one species dominating another applies to the history of the American west where white Europeans invaded and conquered a native culture and justified this in the name of survival. In addition to it's psychological and cultural content I design my work to provide a degree of visual amusement. For me this often creates a situation where how the piece reads publicly may well supersede my own intended systems of meaning. In the weaving of animated toys and raw film footage it is my objective to develop a reading of the cliches of the west simultaneous with the exposure of a deeper gritty reality.
For more information, or visuals, contact Carl Eckhoff at SOHO20 Chelsea by e-mail: soho20@verizon.net by phone: (212) 367- 8994. |
|
top of page | view images | press release ©2002 SOHO20 Gallery |