A Subjective Archaeology: Recent Works by John O’Connell
Exhibition Dates: November 1 – December 3, 2016
Opening Reception: November 3, 2016, 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Artist’s Statement
All of the materials I use in my work are new. None of them are found, repurposed or appropriated. I create elaborate surfaces that reference time, use and trauma but none of them have actual histories. All of the complicated and layered stories found in them, I put there, moment-by-moment. These works are both an act of fiction and a kind of vague remembering. They’re meant to engage in an uneasy negotiation between what is “real” or experienced and fictional. This is not unlike the stories I tell myself, about myself. This leads to questions about “my” relationship to self and the narrative forms a history and culture that define it.
I often reference antiquated and deteriorating structures of architecture in my paintings. These forms are signs pointing to a shifting and dissipating symbolic system of identity and perception under strain and hold relevancy and meaning. My paintings are meant to engage and examine for myself these fluctuating spaces moment-by-moment, layer-by-layer. This results in visual discourses that regularly arrive at questions about the architectures of meaning, narrative and myself.
“New NAU art exhibit explores the tangible and the abstract” – AZ Daily Sun