FLOPPY OCEAN
SOLO EXHIBITION
MFA THESIS, CALARTS
2018
Surviving the next extinction might require the human to be more like fish. We should be better at obtaining oxygen, reliant on our spines, and more graceful. If the air we breathe could be read by our bodies, would it tell us how to behave in peace with the bodies around us?
Virginia Woolf and David Lynch compare thought to fish. Eileen Myles writes of life as a dingy tank. When something is slippery, fast, and beautiful, it’s easy to cast our hangups on it. The lure of connection keep us throwing our lines into choppy waters. A catch is a brief divinity.
I developed this work to see the goal up close, wondering if there might be something in the symbol itself that would allow me to solve the problems it contains. Like a fish, painting slips between the literal and the allegorical. Maybe it is a way of asking myself to calm down. Maybe it is an excuse for style. Maybe nihilism is smart. Maybe nothing lasts.
In any event, they’re paintings.
MFA THESIS, CALARTS
2018
These are works from my MFA thesis at CalArts. Here is what I wrote to introduce the show…
Surviving the next extinction might require the human to be more like fish. We should be better at obtaining oxygen, reliant on our spines, and more graceful. If the air we breathe could be read by our bodies, would it tell us how to behave in peace with the bodies around us?
Virginia Woolf and David Lynch compare thought to fish. Eileen Myles writes of life as a dingy tank. When something is slippery, fast, and beautiful, it’s easy to cast our hangups on it. The lure of connection keep us throwing our lines into choppy waters. A catch is a brief divinity.
I developed this work to see the goal up close, wondering if there might be something in the symbol itself that would allow me to solve the problems it contains. Like a fish, painting slips between the literal and the allegorical. Maybe it is a way of asking myself to calm down. Maybe it is an excuse for style. Maybe nihilism is smart. Maybe nothing lasts.
In any event, they’re paintings.
