Artist Statement
Artworks, gestures, and performative objects operate free from expected circumstances with emphasis shifted away from literal actions performed towards illogical or absurd propositions. Within these actions, experiments, tautologies, and anti-spectacles, familiar objects are manipulated to create repetition, fatigue, humor, and mistrust. Organized systems become disorganized. Actions negate themselves; there is equal doing and non-doing, which adds up to nothing, but nothing is something too.
The basis of my practice is concept first, with sculptural work, video, or performance works acting as research- testing different aspects, variables, and entry points into our relationship agency and absurdity. The situations presented by the work facilitate negotiations between agency and futility, and explore underlying absurdities in our desire to create permanence. The open ended and responsive nature of conceptual art making, kinetic sculpture, and performance offers challenging and unique opportunities to engage the meaning of objects, or deploy objects to create meaning.
Trey Duvall
August, 2023