Date of Award

Spring 5-2017

Author's School

Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Author Department/Program

Graduate School of Art

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Visual Art

Degree Type

Thesis

Abstract

This thesis focuses on issues uncovered in my pursuit of acceptance as a visual artist. Through consolidating beliefs and ideals of art and juxtaposing historic themes and current trends with personal life experiences, I resolve to construct artworks as dizzying, thought-provoking environments. Recollections of memory are largely anachronistic and profound memories are typically associated with trauma or paradigm change within an abrogated system of faith or other conviction. I question the framework of conditioned vocabularies that inform judgment about any explicit perception.

Considering processes of thinking and the experiential re-engineering mechanisms that establish long-term memory, I endeavor to create works that are dialectic and resonate with a general audience, so as not to be subject to any overdetermined lens for critical understanding. With a Postmodern attitude, I address challenges of post-colonial times by actively engaging structures of mimicry and hybridity via the appropriation of common themes in contemporary art.

Personal anecdotes that manifest the direction of my practice, and brief discussions of artists who have influenced my conceptual underpinnings, as well as my material and esthetic choices, including Marcel Duchamp, Dieter Roth, Mike Kelley, and Sean Landers, are included. I stress that the identity I deliver through art is to be recognized as apocryphal - simultaneously indulgent and self-abasing. Through an interrogation of originality and authenticity, I challenge the viewer to examine their own systems for consideration and interpretation of any prescribed visual language.

Language

English (en)

Program Director

Patricia Olynyk

Program Director's Department

Graduate School of Art

Thesis Advisor

Buzz Spector

Committee Member

Michael Byron

Committee Member

Michael Byron

Committee Member

Andrea Stanislav

Artist's Statement

I am an interdisciplinary artist with an emphasis in installation work that utilizes painting, sculpture, and performance. My works incorporate processes that revolve around play and leisure with a conflation among art history, humor, and material exploration. I address content stemming from an interest in mythology, identity, mimicry, and hybridity. My goal is to muddy and force a complication of information, and to incite intuitive and inventive thinking within an audience; endeavoring to create new encounters for the spectator with themselves, with other audience members, and with place.

Permanent URL: https://doi.org/10.7936/K7QC01ZH

Download

Share

COinS