Visual Arts

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The Poetics of Proximity
(2023-08-04) Russell, James; Armstrong, David Scott
The thematic analysis of my studio work since 2020 work revealed many contradictions. The Poetics of Proximity is an investigation of these contradictions, the connective energy that holds objects, people, and ideas together. My studio work explored how forms gather, interact, and coalesce into meaning, particularly within a grid format. New energetic forms emerged where connections multiply, and where elemental units coalesce. In the mysterious gatherings and connections between individual elements I found emerging patterns, the scaffolding of meaning and belief. My thematic analysis revealed an impulse to organize, connect, construct and repair, to recognize the need for human spirituality as a condition for a better future, an attempt to compensate for my complicity in modern capitalism. My final series, Men in Cities represents bodies in a state of ecstatic exorcism, holding contradiction, deeply engaged in the material transition of the body and mind, energetically vibrating with faith, with new forms always taking shape.