Don't Look Back Statement

DON’T LOOK BACK (Ma Saison Dans L'Enfer) Artist Statement

At the age of 18 I developed an extremely rare genetic eye disease called Keratakonis. The ailment moved rapidly, causing a radical shift in vision from excellent sight to near-total blindness in less than three months. It was only through corneal transplants was vision finally restored over a lengthy four year period. Having spent the past seven years virtually denying that this experience ever took place, I have decided to re-examine this unique period of my life in the exhibition DON'T LOOK BACK(Ma Saison Dans L'Enfer).

DON'T LOOK BACK (Ma Saison Dans L'Enfer) is a visual journey into blindness. Throughout the creation of this body of work a flood of memories came rushing back, of countless hours in hospital rooms, I recalled how it felt to be in the position of the wounded. Again, I felt the sensation of obtrusive exposure as innumerable doctors and nurses entered and exited, the burning focus of blinding lights, the emotion of being a living exhibition, scrutinized by an audience of unfamiliar individuals as my vision faded away to dim shadows, and finally, total blackness.

DON'T LOOK BACK (Ma Saison Dans L'Enfer) is not a literal expression of blindness, rather a non-linear selection of fragmented and disjointed images, a “travelogue” of memory. The images represent the various stages of development of the disease, either entering or exiting the dusky shadows. The gathering storm of darkness, to me is its own narrative character, descending swiftly and mercilessly.

The title DON’T LOOK BACK (Ma Saison Dans L'Enfer) is meant to reference both my own ambiguity towards re-examining this painful period of my life, as well as A Season In Hell by French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud. Often my work references history or literature, and I am interested in twinning personal and historical narratives. A Season In Hell was an integral aspect of my psychological recovery. Often I would walk around the house in the middle of the night, in solitude and silence, training myself to understand my environment in order to better navigate table legs and door handles. These literal forays into dark obscurity became personal expeditions which I found analogous to the voyages taken by the protagonist in A Season In Hell. Other artists have previously found inspiration in the work of Arthur Rimbaud, with Robert Mapplethorpe, Pablo Picasso, David Wojnarowicz, and Stephen Kasner being notable examples.

Another thematic pillar of DON’T LOOK BACK (Ma Saison Dans L'Enfer) is the notion of identity gained through the recognition of the other, or opposite. Aesthetic choices were made to emphasize pairings – black/white, light/dark, day/night, sight/blindness, etc. In short, to truly appreciate the light, one must experience the dark.

Brief Division Statement

Brief Division Artist Statement

Having been born and raised in the magnificent, post-industrial city of Saginaw, Michigan, I am interested in the notion of deterioration and urban decomposition. Much of my work for the past several years has concerned the interior landscape, the psychological effects of time on the individual; a corrosion of the mind.

These works depict landscapes of imagined, indistinct locations. I am fascinated by invented narratives, and these images were created by attempting to recall places that I have and have not encountered – a travelogue of unexperienced memories. In this way the pieces selected for the Brief Division exhibition are an extension of my previous psychological explorations - these examinations have led to two different tracks of work – Leviathan and Fake Empire.

A Few Things That I Find Inspiring Right Now

7 books that made me want to be an artist:

1. Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell
2. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man
3. Knut Hamsun, Hunger
4. Jack Kerouac, On The Road
5. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes From the Underground
6. T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
7. Paul Auster, New York Trilogy

Miroslav Tichy, one of my favorite artists:

With cameras that he himself skillfully and imaginatively cobbled together from old tins, toilet rolls and cigarette boxes, spectacle lenses or lenses cut with a knife from Plexiglas, in the 1970s and 80s Miroslav Tichý took over a hundred shots a day of women in his small hometown in Moravia.Tichý’s working methods have little to do with conventional artistic praxis. His camera at the ready, he would observe the daily round of the female population of his native town, in a matter of seconds snapping shots from his hip, and instantly concealing the strange device again. The result of those forays are shots of women at the market, in the swimming pool, at work, in pubs, in the streets and public squares. he’s taken thousands of shots Fifty years, and he’s never shown them to anyone, all just for himself.

There Will Be Blood
P.T. Anderson’s American masterpiece. This epic of oil, blood, greed, religion, and madness is really about America at the crossroads of the 20th century. Daniel Day-Lewis is mesmerizing as the vortex tearing everything around him to pieces. Truly original.