This series examines a struggle to seek multiple levels of equanimity in a time in which circumstances pose a challenge to emotional and social well-being. The goal of this work is to address these obstacles at the collective level through commentary while simultaneously working to overcome them on a scaled-down individual level.
The body of work I created in 2018 is a reaction to the normalizing of a fractured civil infrastructure within a country trying to locate and diagnose a malignancy of it’s social strata and governing body. Chaotic political circumstances have spurred seemingly irreparable divides. Empathy, introspection, compassion and civility have been abandoned and replaced with distrust, defiance, paranoia, confusion, hatred, anxiety and apathy. These have become the prevailing emotions that hang over our society as we struggle to convert or wage war with those we disagree with. This coinsiding with radical changes in technology, ecology and modalities of interpersonal relationships has bred a generation that grapples with an identity crisis as it navigates at light speed through an absurdist landscape of bullshit. These pieces are about that.
These pieces express an underlying sinister opulence and a latent detachment that seems to be abundant within the communities of the exceedingly wealthy. After almost two years living within one of the richest neighborhoods in the country in suburban Connecticut, I observed complacent and comfortable lives insulated inside a bubble of illusory fulfillment and contentedness. Self indulgent and self important nobles, cloistered from suffering, physical labor, struggle and the aesthetically imperfect, breed endless future generations of elite who see in themselves an inherent superiority for attaining triumphant success, despite the reality of providentially being born to a privileged existence dedicated to the perpetuation of a culture that celebrates the splendor of resolute amassment of personal wealth.
This series aims to convey the numbing and bewildering potential of confronting overwhelmingly complex and omnipresent controlling systems within nature, societal systems, and universal mathematical laws, which are difficult to comprehend or accept and are therefore ignored or denied. These pieces are meant to be visually alluring and disruptive to reflect an overall feeling of confused awe and comfortability in a willful ignorance that explores a reduction of religiosity while simultaneously rejecting it.
These pieces are expressions of the absurdist nature of beliefs and reverence of meaning and purpose. Reminiscent of religious iconography and Renaissance portraits, they evoke a fused dichotomy between an adoration of beauty and the sublime, and objective meaninglessness in everything. Our natural visual attraction toward the human face comes into play through the exploration of a fundamental narcissistic desire for self examination and defining a direct relationship with divinity. They are meant to be simultaneously alluring and repulsive to represent the endless struggle of finding purpose in an indifferent universe.
