ARTIST STATEMENT:

10/12/12

Dear Friends,

I'd like to ask you to write something for me about my practice.

I'm asking you because you've both had a key role in some of my undertakings, but more importantly, you've said something over the years that has directly informed my practice; you've said something that has altered the way I think about my practice; or, you have an insight into how my practice is translated into action.

I intend to use your thoughts for reflection, and also to literally use the words you send me, which I will attribute to you, in my artist's statement - an artist's statement collectively written by those who have shaped the artist.

Thank you!!  I have always been invigorated by our collaboration, and it means an enormous amount to me that you're taking the time to work with me on this.  

love,
Doug

Doug’s work asks the question “What kind of art are you for?”

A question is a call and response and in this regard, he is always working towards an inclusive and generative set of propositions.

auto-interventionist - creating projects that intervene into your own life, creating ways to lose control of your own projects.

Is the rationale behind this working method meant to eliminate the routine of one's own mind? to constantly position oneself in relation to others?

These propositions are fundamentally about relationships; a series of communications that get collaged together.

an ambassador

perpetually opening every potential door that may present itself to allow for expanded participation

I believe that this 'great faith' stems from your ability to understand yourself as part of a collective subject navigated by singular entities.

Juxtapositioning of people, places, and materials whose textural overlaps are determined by the participating parts.

regard the complexities and dynamics of the conflicts always already embedded in any forms of agency in the present, as potential.

getting strangers to throw themselves into bizarre, difficult, annoying, even scary commitments

take small opportunities and stretch them into unknown (and often uncomfortable) territories.

This form of collage is meant to be direct, accessible, playful, and to create unpredictable openings/fissures.

This keeps the projects from ever quite reaching a finished form.  The projects continue to shift, expand, contract, according to who and what is present.

the intention remains the same:

conflate audience and maker by seeing all works as intricate exchanges whose process of being and relating to one another matters above all else.

to combine creative resources and energies in order to bring something new to the surface, if only for a moment. These expressions may have a short life, in that they are actually lived,

Everyday contexts and places are reframed through a careful set of operations; a series of carings and carrying-ons that deliberately bring people together to face one another.

The texture of these collages has created a unique aesthetic as well as politics for Doug—quirky, accessible, socially engaged, hyper-present.

That Frankenstein kind of stuff is the only work I am interested in getting involved with anymore.

####################################
Integrating it all together into one big ball of life. The game of pushing this mass up the steep hill by the amassed group of marauders   creates just as many tales as when that energy is released and let loose freely back  down. Somehow during the twister that blade of grass got embedded into the unbroken glass, half in one side, half the other.the phenomenon now rest.  Flush-topia rides the raft of Medusa down the drain and embraces when and where it might pop up next  allowing  the natural  buoyancy to  do it's thing

There is a painting hanging in Doug’s grandparent’s small house a block from the Jersey shore.  It’s a painting his grandfather made of the sea, somewhat turbulent but full of delightful foam and cresting waves. Doug has loved this painting he was a small boy. But he can’t replicate it. Because he can't recreate the painting of the sea his grandfather made, he tries to recreate the foam and spray— the jubilant afterglow of a new kind of swimming, of the temporary submersion in a new experience of oneself amidst the sea, and other adventurous surfers, snorkelers, deep sea divers, and fisherman amongst the swell.