25 Feb

Problems

Problems as limitless Opportunities

frigo

I’m interested in trying to understand whole individuals and whole ideas through the fragments of perceptual memory, the sound bites, and the semiotic tokens collected by society and recollected by the individual. It’s the product of these carefully selected elements that multiplies out to a greater whole, and it’s in that product that I look for a more holistic understanding. My present approach evolved out of what seemed at the time to be an artistic cul-de-sac: damage to the nerves in my forearm from the single-minded pursuit of pointillism. Driven to think of other ways to create art, I began pushing myself to experiment with new media: my torso, a tricycle, X-rays, dandelions, the Bible, viewers’ experiences, and so on. The selection of the medium became integral to the art, as much a part of the story and the holistic experience as the selected fragments themselves. In bringing my work to the public I look to create a public dialog with art, frequently inviting the audience to contribute in some way, nearly always breaking apart the artistic process in order to make it connect to a more immediate reality through video that shows manipulation of the medium from fragments into a unified whole. Phil Hansen