Jason Mendiola

Caesura

Over the past three years, my practice has developed through an ongoing engagement with metal, motion and modular systems. Working with fabrication as a kind of language – grounded in repetition, adjustment, and process – I began to think of sculpture not as a fixed form, but as a structure in flux: a system that adapts, folds, remembers, and reconfigures.Caesura, explores these ideas though large-scale modular systems composed of rotating ring structures, randomized motor functions, and an unpredictable surface oscillation. Governed by programmed logic, this work resists legibility. Its movements are rhythmic yet irreducible; creating a system that both feels mechanical and autonomous. I draw from ideas of distributed intelligence, collectivity, subjectivity, intra-action, atmospheric spatial relations, and flux – through the writings of James Bridle, Karen Barad, Gaston Bachelard and Blackfoot philosopher Leroy Little Bear – to reframe the sculpture as a relational entity: one that senses, responds, and transforms.Machinery, for me, holds a form of the sublime. The motor becomes a site of recurrence and reorientation. My approach draws from the influence from artists like John Cage, whose use of the I Ching brought chance and listening into compositional form. In Caesura, sonic elements though subtle – emerge through the vibration of hardware, the resonance of materials, and the shifting relationship between the work and its acoustic environment. The installation becomes not only visual but atmospheric, attuned to the logic of aural architecture, where sound shapes space and space shapes perception.When one approaches the structure, they are invited to sense not only the object, but their place in relation to others around it. I am reminded of Rainer Maria Rilke’s words, shared by Bachelard:“…silently the birds Fly through us. O, I, who long to grow, I look outside myself, and the tree inside me grows.”Caesura is less a singular object than an active ecology – an invitation to step into a field of motion, resonance, and disorientation. I want the encounter to be felt as much as seen, to be both spatial and introspective: a moment suspended between presence, perception and becoming.Please note:The images and video uploaded to my portfolio represent the process work prepared for my final critique. While the material presented here reflects a near-complete version of the project, the final installation at GradX will include additional components and further refinements.

“Caesura is defined as a pause or break in a line of poetry, usually near the middle, where one phrase ends and another begins”

Caesura

×

Caesura

×

Caesura

×

Caesura

×

Caesura

×

Caesura

×

Caesura

×

Caesura

×

Caesura

×