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NEW WORK BY DIRK STASCHKEMarch 5 through April 30, 2004
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Where does art come from? Sometimes, working in my studio, there is not always a clear idea of what is being made and at other times I know long before the piece is even started. The later tends to be more conceptual and the former tends to be more intuitive. Each way of working tends to have advantages over the other. Intuitive work seems to have an enigmatic quality, rendering it more open to interpretation and armored in the mystery of it's meaning. Conceptual work is perhaps better at expressing ideas, or at least the idea is the underlying meaning of the work, providing a sense of closure for the viewer. These strengths are a potential weakness and can render work either inert or to didactic. I try to make work somewhere between these two extremes. Cohesively, the show can be viewed as an exploration of these ideas. This show is best viewed not as a single thought but as individual pieces or smaller related groups. The majority of the work is based in human figuration and at times references sculptural history as well as contemporary culture. Often, the work combines these incongruent elements in a manner that asserts larger questions with anthropological undertones ranging from social to political. The end result is an odd symbiosis of past and present. -Dirk Staschke
In the Land of Make Believe Today, we are faced with a similar situation concerning the leaders of our country. In the land of make believe Santa does not run a deficit for giving things away, where as in real life, it takes money to run a country. For some, the idea of a tax refund reduces once rational adults into naive children, who upon thoughts of shiny new toys and sugary delights lose all control and scamper off in search of new found riches. On the other hand, Santa has been known to use fear and intimidation to get his way. " You better watch out, you better not cry ...He knows if you've been naughty or nice...". Although it's a similar technique, it's not quite as threatening as violating your civil liberties. The Bush administration has used our fear and the September eleventh tragedies to silence public discourse and impose a childlike simplification embodied in phrases like "good against evil" and "for us or against us" to explain their actions and world agenda. Perhaps, like scared children we need to believe in the benevolent givers of fairy tail land at any cost, even that of our common sense. Some might say that, "The Emperor has no clothes". In actuality it seems "the clothes make the man".
Anonym Series This work is rooted in the history of human figuration but with the addition of elaborate architectural ornamentation. In this work I view ornamentation as a generic symbol for beauty. Figures are often shorn off unexpectedly by architectural elements, creating situations where the observer is faced with their response to what might be considered beautiful and the uncomfortable situations caused by the disjuncture of the human form. Often these points of separation obscure identity, causing individuals depicted to seem more random and anonymous, unlike monuments to specific persons. In this aspect, the work is also an open-ended question concerning how we as individuals fit into the larger context of society. - Dirk Staschke
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