@blackholepreacher /
arielleshultz.com
Ovals. 2024. Encaustic, oil stick, and chalk on canvas, 69 x 53 in.
Box with Circle. 2024. Ballpoint pen on cigar box, 6.5 x 6.5 x 3 in.
The artwork is an exploration of texture as a collapsed representation of
time; an ongoing and oscillating process of build up and scratching back
into, covering and partially revealing what is beneath. Simple engagement
with mediums like wax and tools like a ballpoint pen result in an
accumulation of marks and repetitive gesture. Material memory is what
remains from this attempt to define boundaries, to make one’s own, to
categorize the artwork into something known.
The artworks draw inspiration from studying made objects of the past in
an attempt to define what makes us human. Most interesting are the
subversion of objects whose function has been forgotten and now are
intentionally repurposed. The meaning of forms like the oval which
appear throughout time in human art are now obscure; the repeated
iterations of the shape are attempts to understand and fulfill their lost
purpose.
All of the works are receptacles; simultaneously containing all which
came before while expanding the container, in search of some analog
truth about our place in the universe and how we got here.