Solo exhibition at Choplet Gallery and Ceramic Studio
​October 10-November 11, 2011

Hello Non-Object examines the relationship between function and identity and its impact on lived experience. The show takes as its premise the notion that nothing we perceive exists without function. As soon as we sense, a relationship to the thing sensed is established, and it is objectified – organized and, in a sense, distanced. People in our lives assume roles – friend, parent, lover, client – and they too become objects defined by their functions. It is inescapable, and self-knowledge is also subject to this phenomenon.  But stemming from an unperceived internal reality, we somehow know of a world beyond function. This knowledge fuels a universal desire for true acceptance and appreciation that can hardly be indulged, which is a source of mental and emotional friction. However, if we can experience different objects simultaneously, there must be some border or seam that is neither first object nor second.

This space is the non-object, an elusive concept that disappears the moment it is recognized. A metaphor, the non-object represents respite from our relentless functionality, an opportunity to momentarily transcend perception. 

Using ceramic, a medium traditionally used to build functional objects, Hello Non-Object strings together four distinct series of sculptures, each a study on a different facet of these ideas. The “Jury” series modifies functional forms to render them inconvenient or non-functional and asks, how might these objects now be classified? In the “Anatomy of Violence” series, the struggle between human and object is expressed in the tensions between figurative and functional. The “Breath Sculpture” series explores time as a basic quality of our perception and breath as a vital function. Finally, to produce the “Object Me” series, Fordist ethics were applied to the process of sculpting self-portrait heads. Labor was mechanized, timed, and repeated to achieve maximum efficiency and functionality. Engraved in the back of each head is a distinct “Item Number,” the total amount of sculpting time for that head, and the days on which it was sculpted. By highlighting the slight differences that distinguish the self-portrait heads as well as their similarities, we are able to consider the space between objects. These examinations bring material form to something deeply immaterial, an apt metaphor for our own condition.