patrick deguira
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exhibitions:
artist's website:
statement:
“Artists should restrict themselves to the impersonal description of physical objects… leaving the viewer to guess what is underneath.” Alain Robbe-Grillet
I would describe myself as a figurative artist. An artist, not so much interested in the body, but objects that stand in for the body. Photographs, mirrors, canes, tools, chairs, megaphones, sounds, staircases, ladders, animals, abstractions, and text make up the figure that “acts out” in the work that I construct. I began calling my sculpture, two-dimensional works, and installations “props” several years ago. Like Allen McCollum’s “surrogates” or Marcel Duchamp’s “readymades”, I needed a way to implement various meanings to what I described as art making: which concern the concepts of death, humor, domesticity, and emotional communication. These “props” are constructed to act as a physical or textual device within a narrative (or a conceptual plinth) and can be viewed as things that have been imprinted by a figurative body or figurative language. Another fundamental activity found in my work, is resolving the visual implications of emotion through the use of abstract patterns and phenomenological systems.
Many phenomenological methods involve various reductions, these reductions are tools to better understand and describe the workings of consciousness, not to reduce any phenomenon to these descriptions. In other words…when a reference is made to a “thing’s” essence or idea, or when one details the constitution of an identical coherent thing by describing what one “really” sees as being only these sides and aspects, these surfaces, it does not mean that the thing is only and exclusively what is described. The ultimate goal of these reductions is to understand how different aspects are constituted into the actual physical thing as experienced by the viewer.
“Artists should restrict themselves to the impersonal description of physical objects… leaving the viewer to guess what is underneath.” Alain Robbe-Grillet
I would describe myself as a figurative artist. An artist, not so much interested in the body, but objects that stand in for the body. Photographs, mirrors, canes, tools, chairs, megaphones, sounds, staircases, ladders, animals, abstractions, and text make up the figure that “acts out” in the work that I construct. I began calling my sculpture, two-dimensional works, and installations “props” several years ago. Like Allen McCollum’s “surrogates” or Marcel Duchamp’s “readymades”, I needed a way to implement various meanings to what I described as art making: which concern the concepts of death, humor, domesticity, and emotional communication. These “props” are constructed to act as a physical or textual device within a narrative (or a conceptual plinth) and can be viewed as things that have been imprinted by a figurative body or figurative language. Another fundamental activity found in my work, is resolving the visual implications of emotion through the use of abstract patterns and phenomenological systems.
Many phenomenological methods involve various reductions, these reductions are tools to better understand and describe the workings of consciousness, not to reduce any phenomenon to these descriptions. In other words…when a reference is made to a “thing’s” essence or idea, or when one details the constitution of an identical coherent thing by describing what one “really” sees as being only these sides and aspects, these surfaces, it does not mean that the thing is only and exclusively what is described. The ultimate goal of these reductions is to understand how different aspects are constituted into the actual physical thing as experienced by the viewer.
education:
1994 B.F.A. MEMPHIS COLLEGE OF ART
1993 NEW YORK STUDIO PROGRAM
HONORS AND AWARDS
2005 VISITING ARTIST. SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS. NY
2002/2003 VISITING ARTIST. WATKINS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN
1994 B.F.A. MEMPHIS COLLEGE OF ART
1993 NEW YORK STUDIO PROGRAM
HONORS AND AWARDS
2005 VISITING ARTIST. SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS. NY
2002/2003 VISITING ARTIST. WATKINS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN