Richard Wearn
Studio Arts Faculty (Sculpture)
My work reflects upon the status and social place of art. My premise asserts a critical and theoretical interaction with the complexities of the world and the socioeconomic, political and technological conditions that define visual culture. I am interested in the mobility of practice and publics in our highly articulated society, and the effect of this on art as a cultural form.
I examine and restructure the visual focus and behavioral norms associated with the recent tradition of artworks concerned with the idea of encounter. I infer the potential for the art object to reprogram thinking and action by inviting the viewers' associative memories to inform response.
By maintaining the modernist myth of the artwork as a problem resolved, we are forced to reconsider the position of the art object as it stands in relation to every other object in the world. The implication of the object as an element that may be inserted into a variety of scenarios or to be used in multiple courses of action correlates systems of meaning with types of use - my inquiry is less concerned with what the work means, and more to do with the question? "How do I use it???"