Clumsy, Colossal is a selection of silkscreen prints created during my first year at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, as I work toward earning my Master of Fine Arts. This series of prints functions as an inquiry into the many layers of the paradoxes of masculinity. By placing a lens on the false dichotomies inherent to "manhood" such as hard/soft, strong/weak, and stoic/explosive, the result of insistence on these rigid binaries becomes clear: an atmosphere of extreme pressure, paranoia, comic absurdity, and self destruction. Clumsy, Colossal is my attempt to depict these binaries as they are typically expected to be presented, then to go further and dive into the fissures that are nestled in between them.
The subjects of many of the pieces in this exhibition suffocate the picture plane, immediately asserting their largeness. Food is used often as vulnerable, soft-bodied semiotics, stand-ins for uncomfortable feelings and cravings, almost always being squished and punctured. The figures depicted, usually men of a certain patriarchal archetype, are cartoonish caricatures, yet mirror close familial figures in my life growing up in Indiana. I intentionally render the forms with playfulness; as self-reflexivity is often a somber activity, it is also necessary to recall the absurdity of the moment, and to recognize that the strained pursuit of an answer to the question "what makes a man?" is a fool's errand. Ultimately, this exhibition is intended to be a space for the viewer to consider their own relationships (and/or complicity to these nuances as it has been for me during the creation of the work.
