Artist Statement

Inorganic Fluids Series -The Great White Out.

Formal at its base, I am drawn to the pure experience of art making. Most recently, my work married the purest organic forms-blood, water, semen, smoke, and the high tech world of consumer ready mades, specifically, home decorating materials.

The ready made fabrics were used to solicit specific reaction, sensory impressions. This new body of work introduces the idea of whiting out the ready made- in protest, in apathy, in denial of the surface, to halt preconceptions, for purity, and ultimately so that the investigation of the painter as mark maker will not have any interference.

This group of work is much less interested in the public statement, instead reverting to the deepest investigation of life’s beginnings. Fluids tend to be the predominant carriers of life, the exception being fire and wind, both of which are referred to with smoke. As if medical specimens, each piece in this series is a magnified view of creations beginnings, creations literally in the work and metaphorically in their representations of fluids.

I have taken back the work, taken it back into the studio. Into the most personal and private experience between painter and painting. Searching not only for the naturally organic gesture, but also the representation of the

painter’s journey at its most pure and uninhibited existence. A deeper search into the nerve centers.

The end of the nineties has brought focus on the unlimited offerings of the high tech worlds role in a deeper understanding of the organic base which is matter/life. Through technological development the tiniest strands of organic matter-DNA have been revealed and demystified. Without a second thought, we identify ourselves with a cell not even visible to the human eye. With sheer reverence, I continue to employ man made materials as a reference to these times we inhabit. It is important that we recognize the similarities between the organic and inorganic worlds and their dependency upon one another.

-Ayenne Applebaum