Myth Messages

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Deborah Adams Doering: Artist's Statement

Art is a world of ideas made manifest. "Manifest" means "to be caught up in the act." When I view art, I put forth the effort to be caught up in the act of the artist's work. When I make art, I extend the invitation to viewers to be caught up in the act of art making, whether social, political, poetic or theoretical.

My installations manifest mainly poetic and theoretical themes, but they also acknowledge socio-political acts. For example, I wrote a narrative artist statement for my installation "Making Espresso, I Stop the War" in which I said that I view my art work as a homeopathic remedy that realigns the energies of the body politic; through that small but significant realignment, I suggest that art has the power to "stop the war." In "Myths of My Ancestors: ATM (Anon Text Messaging)", I suggest that mythic histories, both personal and art historical, are continuously remembered, recognized, and realigned through the act of "object-ification." I encourage viewers to participate in this installation by submitting their own mythic statements at www.mythsofmyancestors.com.

In each installation,I position thoughtfully constructed objects in relationship to each other in a specific context. Each work invites the viewer to think and then act, publically and/or privately. I like to install in different environments, creating work with a strong sensitivity to time and place. I want my art work to be in dialogue with artists who also work in installation spaces and public environments, artists such as Christo + Jeanne-Claude, Judy Chicago, Ann Hamilton and many others less well-known.

Though my installations are influenced by environment, my over-arching conceptual interest is visualizing movement — moving from one state of being to another, mainly through the juxtaposition of opposites at the ends of a continuous spectrum: light/dark, arriving/departing, form/formlessness, past/future, uniqueness/mass-produced. This core concept manifests itself in a basic set of iconic forms: " - ", " I " , " O ", and " ~ ".

These horizontal, vertical, circular and swash marks, my core language of form, allow for associations of movement and transition between dualistic states of being. In this aspect of my work, I am influenced by painters such as Piet Mondrian and Agnes Martin who developed iconic yet very personal mark-making "languages" and whose work manifested as painted surfaces that present viewers with "two-dimensional environments" in which to meditatively engage.

My work moves from the state of being public/participatory/environmental to that of private/personal/ painted and then back again; I embrace the dualities of the art-making spectrum. Individually, I paint and draw, yet in my installations, I open my art practice to all media available, either through my own technical abilities or in collaborating with the technical and artistic skills of others.

Filmmaker Woody Allen, when asked in an interview to summarize Tolstoy's epic work War and Peace, said "It's about Russia." Writing a short summary about my art work may come across as similarly obvious, abrupt or humorous. Yet I hope that in reading this brief introduction concerning my core concepts of manifesting, movement, and mark-making, you will become "caught up in the act" of my art, as well as the art of others, and possibly experience its homeopathic effect within your own sphere of influence.

© Deborah Adams Doering
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