Artist Statement
My work pursuits the understanding of the information that Reality is comprised of. Visual Art language is used to deconstruct, philosophically, the most fundamental concepts of Reality. Fully comprehending and understanding the world and its dynamic relations to and between its parts, is a cause for constructing every art piece. Each piece starts with a question, based on which the process is carefully crafted. Going through the experience of making the piece, its process, results in understanding the question and gaining comprehensive new views. The attempt is to capture most accurately and realistically representation of the information whereby the art piece becomes an assemblage of data and its networks, and so begins to mediate its basic meaning. By doing so the preconceived perceptions of Reality are questioned and reconstructed. My work is Information Realism.
I make Art pieces to understand Reality. Through the Art process I experience the phenomenon, I am an experimenter and an experimentee, so I can fully understand it.
Perceptions:
My work challenges how it is to be seen; How we observe, perceive, and connote the observed; whether to look in sequence or randomly, whether to look close up or just take it all in at once. The details pull the viewer towards the piece creating a particular visual and cognitive impression. From afar, the collection of marks, however, creates an overall new visual and conceptual experience that lets one appreciate the severity, seriousness, or immensity of the represented idea. Just like we have one theory that beautifully explains the workings of the micro world of particles and another theory for the macro world of the Cosmos, they brilliantly fit into one picture. The laws and concepts change depending on our own perceptual view.
Time:
Concepts like consciousness and perception are studied through art processes, breaking it down to the most fundamental bits of quantized information. Time is used as the essential component of the process, may it be as a durational drawing (40 hour long line) or documenting time (every minute in a year, number of days I have been alive, etc.). Through durational drawings time is observed with a full focus and consciousness, analyzing the somatic states of being. Through drawing, through this state of being oneself, one experiences oneself as the passivity of the self being given to the self. This naturally leads to an observation and analysis of one’s existential experiences. Definite conclusions are not necessarily an objective here. Rather the intention is to consciously experience the experiencing self, thus to document one’s morphological and internal existence. Perception of time as a whole of life is explored through many pieces that consist of the number of marks matching the number of days I have been alive. Likewise, documenting every minute in a year or every day is part of many pieces.
Introspections:
My early explorations were performative in nature, analyzing the somatic states of being. These were process based pieces, durational or endurance drawings, focusing on somatic function. For example; 40 hour long line, drawing every minute for 24 hours, marking every breath for 4 days, hole-drawing a minute for 36 hours, 11,929 self-portraits reflecting the number of days I have been alive, 10,000,000 points, 1 mile drawing of portraits, 10,000 things around exploring perception through various physical limitations (fasting, sleep deprivation, etc.); 55,000 portraits, etc. Each piece was executed with carefully constructed visual elements resulting in technical perfection, yet each piece communicates a very particular discourse.
Compulsive obsessiveness of excessive drawing becomes a document of time and the drawing’s creation; it becomes a document of experience itself. When so constructed, the act of drawing allows me to re-experience existence, but in a slower and fully conscious way, so that perceptions become apperceptions.
Works above mentioned, like 1 mile drawing, 40 hours, 1 million bricks, etc. break the preconceived expectations of personal potential. The norms of what is possible are arbitrary and set by the society, cultural, and/or family. My work breaks those expectations showing that preset potential is nothing more than oppressive fiction and that one must constantly search for one’s potential by never reaching it but always going beyond. If potential is reached it must mean that it was not the potential.
Randomness within determinism:
Pieces like Indeterminism explore randomness that arises from a very strict set of rules the art process is structured by. 100 drawings of flowers are cut into 40,000 square pieces and reassembled randomly into a new unrecognizable image.
The rules are strictly set, however, the outcome is highly unpredictable. Pieces like Necessitarianism, 16,787 Scars, Calendar, Deterioration, 1 million bricks, etc. are not only structured so that the outcome depends on the process but the majority of pieces even I do not see the outcome until the piece is installed in a show. It is like setting up an experiment and assuming the outcome but not knowing what is going to happen until the experiment is completed.
Through my art pieces I try to understand the nature of concepts by reducing them to the most basic Art constructs. Use of materials is reduced to paper and pencil for the majority of the pieces. Minuscule drawing elements become colossal art pieces through a unique repetition of each mark. Most pieces contain tens to hundreds of thousands, and even millions of particularly chosen drawing elements. Repetition of mark bits, through durational, repetitional, excessive, and endurance drawings, creates unpredictable randomness that self organizes into patterns and structures on a large scale. This randomness and determinism is one of the fundamental fibers of the Universe.
I seek understanding of Reality and its relations by constructing art processes based on the singular information. Through my work I search for the informational epistemology of Reality. I construct the Art piece process so I can go through the phenomenon, thus understanding it. I don’t need to prove the Reality but to understand it.