Ron Lambert
Living Goodbye
December 20 - February 2
ARTIST STATEMENT:
There are instances when the environment reminds us of our lives, such as the point at the beginning of a rainstorm when you’re not sure if you feel the water yet or not, in extreme weather when our lives are threatened, and also when we encounter something so breathtaking that for a brief moment our lives are taken off course. Art has been given the job of capturing contemporary life, providing mementos of things the culture does or should feel for. Culture moves at an exhausting pace yet it is difficult to make art about flux, to make objects and images that ask the audience to remain still in a culture which constantly threatens to pass them by. As we leave our bodies to move at the pace of progress, we pass the physical parts of life which remind us that we take up space. It is in the moments of the sublime experience that life slows down if even for a second. Art making provides me with an opportunity to explore the sublime through the construction of experiences. Art can mimic life physically; it can also mimic the experiences of life, adding interjections to remind us of the pace at which we live and how one perceives beauty and the aesthetic of contemporary life.
Culture aims its efforts toward a sense of perfection. I see this in how we construct the landscape: by making it manicured we believe it is under control. The more we try to force our environment into submission, the more we are faced with the futility of imposing a system. My work is an attempt at beauty and perfection that understands the failure of that effort. I equate it to the way in which we start a process and once we are invested in it we find a problem. Instead of starting over and admitting the idea was unsuccessful, we put a patch over the issue. We start putting patches on patches and after a while the process is more about the attempts to repair than the original goal. In the end it might be the patches are more beautiful than the goal of the original plan.
I desire to artistically explore a sense of constructedness and impermanence, which remind me of our own impermanence despite the best efforts of science and medicine. While technology explains away things that were once mysteries, phenomena, or even miracles, the sight of such occurrences still inspire awe. The sublime comes from a need to be awed, a need to break routine, a need to feel there is still wonder in the world around us. As the natural environment shrinks, the sublime recedes into such miniscule events as the concentric rings formed from a drop of water, of the reflection of the sky in a puddle alongside the walkway.
