“Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive.”
Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
This work strives for immediacy. Visual information is a means of communication, the discrete brushstroke across this portfolio is an earnest invitation to pause, look, and see. With these pieces, I hope to cultivate curiosity through a sensory experience. Artwork, prima facie, is the sum of marks and materials into a composition. In my calculations, I work with simple values and candid materials. Simple geometric shapes are repeated till the equation departs mundane for mystifying.
My views of what art ought to do for the viewer is formed by what it has done for me in the studio. Art brings my mind to a hum, importantly distinct from silence, the hum is a steady flow of problems to be solved and details demanding attention. The hum is best achieved through patience and an open mind. Aesthetic beauty escapes logic, I cannot reason my way to a successful artwork. Only through immersion in the present via materiality do I ever so often stumble upon a success.
If the most graceful way to exist in the studio is to trip and fall over experiments again and again; the most graceful way for the viewer to see is to embrace the snag of artworks like thorns on a branch. If the viewer drops the adult tendency to know and prefers briefly to be a child, I believe they will reach the Hum. How was this made? Why are the colors dancing together? How does this table stand? Why does this work for me? The humming mind asks these questions in the gallery. I hope to keep the answer to these questions hidden in my art. Somethings are better left in the fog, they live longer that way. The fog is what I love about art, the dissonance between materials and my own understanding keeps me coming back, without any ambition to fully grasp the mystery. When one revels amidst the fog, the studio and gallery are of the purest places to be.
ethanversh@gmail.com
@vershstuff
Ethan Versh 