FACE TO THE FLOOR

I was born in 1999, just before the panic of Y2K spread and a year and a half before the Twin Towers fell. For many my age, the early 2000s were wrought with loneliness and peppered with a unique flavor of instability that never truly faded. Refuge was, and indeed still is, found online, in media, and cultural phenomena. FACE TO THE FLOOR unapologetically explores, translates, and ultimately delaminates these cultural markers and presents them in a reflective, sardonic, and humorous manner.

This project draws inspiration from online phenomena and a shared nostalgia for early and modern internet culture as a universal visual language that is simultaneously encrypted and unencrypted. This encryption is a gateway to an infinite amount of subcultures, belief systems, and in-jokes that are often heavily guarded. FACE TO THE FLOOR aims to dissect these transgressive symbols and in-jokes, such as the Insane Clown Posse, and re-invent them through digital methods and motifs. This transformation re-frames the humor and points the finger at the viewer, forcing them to contend with their relationships to these cultural markers. 

Artist Statement

My work taps into the often-overlooked aspects of contemporary subcultures and visually dissects and delaminates them until they’ve almost lost their cultural, social, or political meaning. By adventurously combining traditional and unconventional mediums, I explore, translate, and re-translate our encoded cultural languages through deceptively simple curated compositions. I utilize the humor and transgressive materiality of objects native to early and contemporary internet culture to question our current realities and connections to them. My approach to these questions is not as an artisan but as a cultural explorer interested in matching challenging problems with equally challenging material explorations. For me, the emphasis lies in the end result being absent of my hand, convincingly digital, and in a permanent state of fluidity. My primary incentive is to create work that invites viewers to engage and disengage with the work simultaneously and contemplate whether they are in on the joke, or are a part of the joke themselves.