Artist Statement:
As the use of genetically derived technologies to analyze human health and manipulate animal and plant life becomes commonplace, how we define nature and ourselves is shifting. This exhibition brings together a selection of recent work (much of it never exhibited) that explores different facets of the human-genetic relationship and its burgeoning relevance in both our cultural and personal lives. By placing overlays of DNA code or its representation onto the surface of various bodies, a direct connection between external realities and internal drivers are generated. As the concept of the genome begins to sink into our daily culture, I am interested in using pictorial images from our common landscapes to question how our perception of life itself is changing. In these works I attempt to represent a new way of seeing nature, where a plant or animal’s genome is just as accurate a means of representation as its physical form. While science would not agree with this statement, the drive and focus of scientific research to manipulate genomes at the DNA base-pair level effectively creates a trajectory that sets out a path to attain it. This hopefully generates deeper questions for the viewer about how we support and position science to create mechanisms to control, manipulate, and reinvent life.
On the surface my genetic-themed work projects a formalistic fascination in the minuscule yet utterly complex systems that genetics seeks to decode, but layered in these works are hopefully more daunting questions about how genetics may be changing how we define aspects of personal identity, free will, productivity, and what constitutes life.
1. Title wall of exhibition
2. Installation view looking west
3. Installation view looking north (L to R): Pinus Taeda, Cellulose Synthase #1 (2013) and Nine Leaves Separated by Nothing (2009)
4. Installation view looking northeast
5. Installation view looking southeast
6. Installation view looking southwest with title wall
7. Installation view of Glass Skin video sculpture (2010), cast glass, video display, DVD player, steel
8. Glass Skin, detail
9. Glass Skin, detail
10. Installation view of Twelve Exact Differences (2013), dye sublimation prints on Aluminum, 11” x 14” each
11. Twelve Exact Differences, detail
12. Installation view of (L to R): Chromosome (2006), Code Walk #1 (2009-2013), Cloverfield, Cytochrome P450 (2012)
13. Detail of Pinus Taeda, Cellulose Synthase #1 (2013)
14. Installation view of Writing Down My History (2007)
15. Installation view of Prunus avicum (2006-2013)
16. Installation view of (L to R): What I Must Wear Now (2008), We Pass These Things Along (2008-2013)