Encontrei este artista a 2 anos e continuo a ficar fascinado com tudo o que ele produz
I’m interested in trying to understand whole individuals and whole ideas through the fragments
of perceptual memory, the sound bites, and the semiotic tokens collected by society and
recollected by the individual. It’s the product of these carefully selected elements that
multiplies out to a greater whole, and it’s in that product that I look for a more holistic
understanding.
My present approach evolved out of what seemed at the time to be an artistic cul-de-sac:
damage to the nerves in my forearm from the single-minded pursuit of pointillism. Forced to
think of other ways to create art, I began pushing myself to experiment with new mediums: my
torso, a tricycle, X-rays, dandelions, the Bible, key phrases out of audience stories, and so
on. The selection of the medium became integral to the art, as much a part of the story and
the holistic experience as the selected fragments themselves.
In bringing my work to the public I look to create a public dialog with art, frequently inviting the
audience to contribute in some way, nearly always breaking apart the artistic process in order
to make it connect to a more immediate reality through video that shows manipulation of the
medium from fragments into a unified whole. It’s far from a didactic endeavor: I draw
inspiration from my collaborators’ experiences as much as they discover art through my work.
By Phil Hansen
