Description
A red-trimmed, black curtain designates the corridor as a makeshift gallery space. Behind the curtain is a kinetic sculpture of two small steel-wool figures in gymnastic-like positions moving in circles. An overhead projector projects an image of a clock with the same figures acting as the hands of the clock onto a small door near the floor behind the sculpture. A pile of pamphlets with a story about the figures is on a child-size chair at the entrance to the exhibition. The artist functions as a barker, inviting the public to view the Sideshow.
Statement
I make art about personal experiences dreams and dialogues. This has allowed me to live. While making art, art is making me. Two ideas have been influential in the creation of the three works comprised in this exhibition
If I see my life as a story, I can also see it as a story which can be rewitten and reinvented – a kind of memory which serves, “to illuminate and transform the present”. (bell hooks, Choosing the margins as a space of radical openess)
Dreams are not just a matter of interpretation for personal analysis, their stories and images are also raw material available for further development. “The place to look is not only for your feelings, not to your interpretations, not to ask help from a third person, necessarily, but to ask yourself what were you in the image. Where is your imagination”? (James Hillman, Interviews)
These ideas express the freedom and playfulness I experienced while creating the works. Sideshow is a whimsical and dream-like installation. Camped behind curtains in the corridor of the Belgo building, it brings together a kinetic sculpture and an animation in the form of a video projection. A story presented in a pamphlet is available for the spectator to keep.
An acrobatic couple locked in a balancing act is the central image in all of the works. I present them as a metaphor for the balance that is in flux between the sexes, as well as the interior balance each individual struggles to maintain within oneself and within today’s increasingly busy and demanding society.
Does our need for perfection and success leave less and less space for disappointment and doubt? This work is a questioning of our engagement with ourselves and with others. “The examined life makes a virtue of uncertainty. It celebrates doubt”. (John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization)
Karen Trask, Artist statement for MFA Thesis exhibition, 1999