STATEMENT:

The juxtaposition of toys and science (more specifically: dolls and medicine) make up the visual basis and departure point for my ideas. Driven by the personal need for expression I have chosen to present a statement which provokes the viewers to question and deal with something inside themselves.

By using the adult and the child’s combined perspective, I comment on issues concerning technology and medicine in a consumer-based/product oriented society. As Damien Hirst said, "art is like medicine, it can heal." Most simply stated, my work is about healing, growing, examining, and questioning. The symbols are to be open to many interpretations, such as: (1) the effects of late capitalism on the individual. (2) the effects of modern technology on the body. (3) a questioning of faith in science and institutionalized religions... and (4) coming to terms with mortality.

With the effects of modern invention on the body and using a child’s daydream/nightmare world to represent, what I refer to as, “icons of the subconscious,” I’ve attempted to demonstrate possible conclusions to the mysteries of such effects. In my art I contrast the academic with kitsch, real with surreal, science with poetry, fact with fiction and horror with humor. The combination of opposing ideas and aesthetics, bring about mixed emotions in the observer. This is to reflect the struggles of living in an increasingly more complex and fluctuating world. I’m attempting to thrust my audience out of their everyday thinking by causing a disruption in their thought patterns. This forces the observers to reevaluate their own inherent philosophical positions, in order to become more open, and (or hopefully) to eventually arrive at better founded more comprehensive explanations. The simple combination of toys and science is meant to be both, paradoxical and ironic: a visual and psychological tension to be resolved by the viewer.

Kurt Riebel