Video with installation, 1hr loop. The Scale of the projection challenges the architecture with vast gallery space stretching more then thirty feet from top to bottom. Its motion was constant and the silence deafeningly. With in the space the physicality, density and mass of the rollers was juxtaposed by the airy, light torrent that cascaded down the wall.
Wood, Press molded Porcelain, 1.5 meters wide x 28 meters long. The porcelain brick distorts the surface lifting up the wooden sticks like a ripple paused, making the plane three-dimensional and changing the visible code. The pattern appears binary and cryptic. The work transmits a lyrical quality but is potently silent. It stretches to an indefinite end, unsubstantial and continual.
Porcelain, Fired and Unfired, Underglaze Decals, Mixed Media, Installation Image. More than 300 underglaze decals were dipped in porcelain slip and then draped and suspended on lines across the gallery. The work appeared wet in its draped form embossed with pattern from the decals and yet frozen in its chalky air dried porcelain state. At the back wall of the gallery the colorful porcelain scholar rocks are visible.
In this image, the colorful clothespins and lines are visible, suspending the unfired slip dipped underglaze sheets. The lower image details the colorful porcelain rocks. Geologically deformed, the miniature topography is mountainous and alpine with deep crevasse and sharp peeks. The waxy, brightly colored glaze was dry sifted on the surface accumulating on the plains and ridge tops, sliding and settling in the valleys. Its vivid bright and new quality create a visual tension between the cold white geological physicality’s of the porcelain.
Eastern factory produced decals for industrially made ceramic tableware was collaged with pop-culture hobby craft decals from the west in this series Tea & Coffee.
This eastern culturally significant imagery is a re-contextualization after being mashed up with western kitsch. These scenes, partially articulated narratives depicted on the large porcelain canvas are chronologically dislodged and culturally disjointed.
This image illustrates two sides of the same object. The collaged scene on this bottle depicts two perpetuated and often expected stereotypes commonly found in eastern society.
In the right hand image the sepia tone cloud is visible pixilation and over powering the flowered imagery. In the detail shot on the left, an iconic European scene is surrounded by the ubiquitous blue and white pattern while the crowd of people appears to look on longingly. This scene is emblematic of fetishized western culture.
- Unfired Porcelain, Traditional Ware Boards, Photography, Site Specific Installation. This work was part of phase 1 of a 3-phase yearlong artist research project located in vacated ceramic factory buildings in Jingdezhen. Hand thrown, traditional form bowls were sourced from local artisans and then placed on top of a series of a dozen or so concrete pillars around the large abandoned factory complex. Exposed to the elements, the unfired clay bowl forms dissolved and washed away with the rain leaving stumps and stark white streaks down the darkened concert pillars.
Relic Plaster Slipcasting Molds, Combustible Material, Site Specific Installation. These abandoned molds were stacked like totems to create chimneys. They were stoked and smoked turning the white plaster black adding contrast to the forms hidden within. After firing, half of each mold was removed leaving three column of charcoal colored forgotten forms.
Artist Statement
Already we are the oblivion we shall be— the elemental dust that does not know us, the dust that once was red Adam and now is all men, the dust we shall not see.
Already we are the two dates on the headstone, the beginning and the end.
My work leverages the geological, technological and sociological materiality of clay to examine legacy, codification and decay through the plight of the individual and ubiquity of a society. I create time-based installations; sculptural objects, video media and utilitarian vessels that utilize an analogue and binary mash-up to compress time, distort mass and magnify gravity in an attempt to adjust acuity within a space or experience.
We are the Time. We are the famous metaphor from Heraclitus the Obscure.
We are the water, not the hard diamond, the one that is lost, not the one that stands still.
We are the river and we are the Greek that looks himself into the river.
His reflection changes into the waters of the changing mirror, into the crystal that changes like fire.
We are the vain predetermined river, In his travel to his sea.
The shadows have surrounded him. Everything said goodbye to us, everything goes away.
Memory does not stamp his own coin.
However, there is something that stays however, there is something that bemoans.
Excerpts from Jorges Luis Borges’s writings and poems
-- Nick Geankoplis