DOWNTIME w/ Human Wreckage

1) Location? NoWhere Fast USA 🇺🇸

2) Years collaging? I began working with collage in 1997. I continued exploring the medium until roughly 2004 when I abandoned art altogether. After a life changing event in 2013, I picked up my blade with renewed vigor and devoted all my creative attention to this medium.

3) What do you love and hate about collage? Collage has always been a medium filled with magic. It is a cyclical medium. The search for source imagery to fulfil a concept will lead to new discoveries, new inspiration, new ideas. Everything is strung together on a crystallin web of synchronicity. There is nothing to love or hate about a medium, it merely exists. One can only love/hate their relation to it. It is only controlled by limitations we consciously or unconsciously place upon it. If one can move with, rather than against the medium, all limitations fall away.

4) Biggest influences? There are artists I admire and then there are artists who feed me inspiration, most of which are not primarily “visual” artists. I am more touched by their search and less by their language. Amongst these, and definitely the most dominant are William S. Burroughs and David Byrne. Their quest to disrupt control and “stop making sense” has been a concept in which I fully believe and have attempted to provide a visual form. Music has also played a huge role in the development of my visual language, trying to make manifest the intense waves of emotions that roll over me while listening to the likes of: Jean Sibelius, Shostakovich, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. And then of course, Marcel Duchamp, who’s work (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even) has moved me to tears. Within the scope of contemporary visual artists, I would be remiss to not mention the legend Winston Smith. Stumbling upon his book “Act Like Nothing’s Wrong” in a lonely, dusty book shop has provided direction to my otherwise wayward life. And it is this reason I am honored to have had HIM call ME an inspiration! I am also very much enamored with the works of Michael Tunk, Jay Riggio, Justin Angelos, Lala Abaddon, John Vochatzer, Travis Bedel and Kate Banazi.

5) Analog Vs Digital? Analog always/only. The intrinsic history of each element is as crucial to the narrative as the subject itself. Every page, every photo is haunted by the hands that held them and the eyes that adored them. Each cut into the paper releases the ghosts of history. The textures, tones and smells are paramount. The Creation is spiritual, a conjuring of sorts. With analog collage, one is forced to hunt, to immerse one’s self in the search, to explore. While on the quest for that needed element of the perfect size, direction, perspective, color, a myriad of other unknown items will be encountered, generating new ideas, renewing the cycle of creation and inspiration. I frequently ask myself, “ Did I find it, or has it found me?"

6) How do you spend your downtime? Gardening.

7) Three tips for someone starting out in collage?

a) Listen to your paper, it will always tell you where and how it wants to be cut. Keep your blades sharp.
b) Never stop learning.
c) Do whatever the fuck you want. Nothing is true, Everything is permitted.

8) Up and coming shows or projects we should know about? I am currently working on new, unseen works which will be exhibited in October at Exhibit Number 9 in Asbury Park NJ.

Links:

Web: http://www.human-wreckage.com/
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/thehumanwreckage/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/thehumanwreckage/

Artworks (top to bottom)
'The Soft Machine' Paper Collage
'Star Power' Paper Collage
'Anxiety' Paper Collage
'The Pictorial History of Painting (Plate I)' Paper Collage
'Hopeless Embrace' Paper Collage
'Transmission Of Perception' Paper Collage
'LOVE (And Other Patterns of Chaos)' Paper Collage
'Untitled' Paper Collage 'Ethereal Odyssey' Paper Collage