Mediums - Interdisciplinary Arts

Artist's Statement -The romance novel is a codified form that presents a particular sexist view on love and desire. For me, a queer male artist, these texts fundamentally exclude my desire and identity through the portrayal of an ideal heterosexual love. It's the power of fiction which makes us feel our lives are inadequate by taking us out of our present lived situations, and projecting us into staged scenarios which seem enticing and enjoyable. We give up our power, our sovereignty, so that we may exist in this fictional realm where desires and experiences are intensified. My work uses the literal substance of romance novels, ink on paper, as a frame for a vision of love that is queer (homosexual and different). I literally recycle the language of the romance novel by beating the pages, stretching and tearing the letters, spreading and macerating the fibers of the pages into a meshed pile of pulp. The fragments of romance in my work become the evidence to re-contextualize desire and fantasy. My work is a palimpsest for a metaphorical embodiment of representations of love (my own and others). It's the idea of love I want to understand by deconstructing its ideal. The power of fiction, of narratives, is that they stick to us long after the book has been read - reproducible in the space of ideas, in print, in you.

Gallery Affiliations -

Exhibitions - 2002 Freak Show, alternative art space curated by Jennifer Musawwir, MUSAWWIR Art Space, Midland Park, NJ Art Open, juried exhibition from various emerging artists, MGSA Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ Postcards from the Edge, Visual AIDS Benefit, New York, NY Chapter 2, Performance, MGSA Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ Chapter 1, Public Exhibition, MGSA, New Brunswick, NJ Constructions, First Solo Exhibition, Busch Gallery, Piscataway, NJ Pause, Group MFA Thesis show, MGSA Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ Writing on the Wall, Poetry Broadsides, Exhibition, T.W. Wood Gallery and Art Center, Montpelier, VT 2001 Art Open, juried exhibition from various emerging artists, MGSA Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ Reconstructing Projections, Public Exhibit, Mason Gross School of the Arts, New Brunswick, NJ 2000 Reverence for the Past, Studio 407, Mason Gross School of the Arts, New Brunswick, NJ The Reciprocal Consciousness of Art in the Mind of the Living Collector, Studio 407, MGSA, NJ Art Open, juried exhibition from various emerging artists, MGSA Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ 1999 Art Open, juried exhibition from various emerging artists, MGSA Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ