We’re quarantined up here in the mountains, so we set up a new collection I’ve been working on. It’s called “Packing Instructions” (artist statement below). Private show just for the seven of us.
Packing Instructions
I moved to the Catskills from East Africa a couple months ago to work as the creative director at the Urban Cowboy Lodge. In the last 6 years I’ve lived in Israel, New York, and Uganda. In that time, I haven’t had a mailing address. I was transient. All my stuff - my records, books, art - were packed in a storage unit in New Jersey. Now I ‘m settling. That means packing, carrying a lot of heavy shit, unpacking, and carrying more heavy shit. We’ve all done it. I was left with a lot of stuff to throw away and a fat stack of cardboard.
At the same time, we were also opening at the Lodge, so we got a lot of deliveries. Boxes got dropped, unpacked, then burned or recycled. More cardboard. I wanted to do something with all the boxes to represent the personal experience of moving and explore concepts about waste and impermanence of material and art in general. I suppose I just wanted to take something that sucked and make it awesome.
I like cardboard. It’s thought of (or not thought of) as common and disposable, but it’s also well designed and strong and lasts a long time. It’s easy to paint on and presents a lot of options for different sizes and shapes. There’s something familiar about it because we all handle it so often. I am usually overly precious with my work. I try to make everything perfect. This was a chance to work fast. I would never paint this way on canvas. The show is just black and white paint on cardboard from the Lodge and my storage unit. I also chose cardboard because I don’t have much space right now and it breaks down and folds and stores easily. All the pieces in the show can fit, ironically, in one large cardboard box.
As for the “instructions” part of “Packing Instructions”, the text pieces are just declarative statements about life that either do or do not relate to moving and my current circumstances. They’re just things that have popped into my head lately that you hopefully identify with and instruct us in some way as we move from place to place.
That’s it. It’s a show about moving... on cardboard boxes.