Julien Woolley-Fisher
around the corner
Sculpture
2021
Artist Statement:Engaging with the built world, my art practice seeks to map spaces and objects, reconfiguring and obfuscating representation in an attempt to affectively understand both the divisions and relations within our systems. My work asks, how does the built environment, specifically the edifices of spaces and ideologies that humans create, come to shape the relations among humans and other beings?"around the corner" examines the built world and how the structures we collectively construct are experienced as unquestioned, indescribable spaces that may act back on us in unforeseen ways. The artworks in this exhibition explore what I experience as an ambivalent tension between intrigue and skepticism—intrigue for the complexity and scale of the spaces and structures we create, but also skepticism over what these spaces serve and how they may act back on us. Through form and materiality, the sculptures and wall objects in this exhibition reference the built world, emerging as architectural fragments or platform sites. Across these works, I started with industrial materials I was familiar with, then I reappropriated, manipulated, or added to them. These materials then become illusive, the original sources harder to recognize and pin down. In this, my hope is that the materiality both exceeds and misses at representation, allowing us to reconsider the material-discursive syntax of these objects.Drawing on Michael Hays' critical theory on architecture and capitalism, Rem Koolhaas’ concept of “junkspace,” and Walter Benjamin's “ruin,” this work considers how constructed space feels natural and indescribable, even as it has very real, meaningful effects on our lives.