Latent Offerings

Art Space
California State University, Stanislaus
Turlock, California
November 2018

For over a decade I’ve taken on the task of defining what space may be other than an empirical measurement of volume or distance. What appears a simple concept is simultaneously a metaphorical black hole, creating more questions than answers. It’s not just how space (and time) is experienced but how is it created and affected throughout time, communication, and historical records. Beginning with illusionistic space within a photograph and then painting, my interest quickly expanded into more dimensions. Now, with dark matter and somewhere around thirteen dimensions existing as mathematical equations, there is still a lack of knowing what this space actually is. What is evident is that everything is a synthesis of relationships, a thing or object may exist alone on some abstract plane but as we experience a reality, each thing is defined not by itself alone, but by another entity and the space in between. To define one thing is to define another and each is paradoxically an entity on its own as a part of an entire system. The recent development of object-oriented ontology has also become an important underlying philosophical concept for the observation of daily activities and in the studio.

Latent Offerings started as a random experience with a cheap cell phone and autocorrected text messaging three years ago. These forms of communication appear to have something to say while remaining complete absurdities, a contemporary Toaist koan. Incantations or surreal poetry evolved as I used the format to create others based on objects, alliteration and visual appeal of the layout. They continue to exist in an incomplete or phase state, coming and going but never fully in focus, much like an electron cloud. Each piece in the exhibit has become a monument (or anti-monument) to an idea, an offering of something that could become or never will. Some themes relate back to an interest in ecology from earlier work looking at the relationship between humans and nature and the progressive divergence that continues to occur, even more with the digital space that continues to evolve with even more use of abstract data visualization to understand how the world is constructed.

This focus of these physical, abstract and metaphorical spatial understandings and creation of momentary sites of existence in the gallery are meant to proffer information not easily grasped, instilling a longing for more information or answers while giving nothing definitive in return, a significant part of the human condition. It’s meant to challenge, to reveal, draw connections, both weak and strong, to discover how space might be constructed but always unknowable to the full degree. Throughout the gallery, real and fake plants co-exist as a challenge to what seems real and or not and if validation is important to understanding the immaterial, or for that matter, the objects that surround us.