INHERITANCE

Marcel Duchamp Questioned in 1913, if one could make works of art which are not works of art. In a now famous letter to the New York Times in the forties Rothko and Gotlieb wrote: "it is widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as its painted well-This is the essence of academicism, but there is no such thing as good painting about nothing!!!" About the same time interval later Mike Kelly turns the very abandonment of the object into its importance. The struggle with the inheritance an object has and its importance to its identity is a timely catalyst in the fluidity of art history. The basic aura hidden within the material ; what it turns out to be, how it then takes place in the world and then how meaning and implication can continue to attach itself to the perceptibility of an object, is essential to any true understanding of its achievements in reality.

Subversive significance, and secondary histories, all combat the original message in an object, and create a dynamism that can be entertaining, fresh and usually more consequential than its original intent. At times this growth on the side of the object can entirely defeat the original, eating away at it until it disappears as itself. For example where would Koons be without our original understanding of the goodness, the pure unaltered joy of puppyness?

But really, what responsibility does an object have to its own meaning and why shouldn't the artist exploit this weakness of reality to their own more intentional ends. If reality cannot contain itself than its the honor of the artist to recapture and feed it until its a super version of its former self.

My work recombines art history and allows objects meanings to turn completely onto themselves. Although all traditional art materials are used, form oil paint, photography and sculpture what ties the work together into a cohesive whole is the historical art object meaning. By collage the many historical moments and meanings together understanding becomes the cannibal that eats away at itself until we are full with the hallucinogenic expediency of the full food/ object history coma.