MFA THESIS EXHIBITION 2005
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Platform Series (slide projection), 2005
slide projection, pedestal
(video documentation here)

Show Statement

Ultimately, as Merleau-Ponty notes in the ‘Preface’[to Phenomenology of Perception], ‘we shall find in ourselves, and nowhere else, the unity and true meaning of phenomenology’. As genuinely radical reflection, phenomenology recognizes that our primordial relationship to the world ‘is not a thing which can be any further clarified by analysis’; the dynamic, internal relationship between body-subject and the world can only be brought to our attention. This bringing to attention is itself, however, a ‘creative act’ which brings truth into being by disclosing behind reflection that mysterious perceptual realm which is our very ‘access to truth’.

Scientific thinking, a thinking which looks on from above, and thinks of the object-in-general, must return to the ‘there is’ which underlines it; to the site, the soil of the sensible and opened world such as it is in our life and for our body…that actual body I call mine…Further, associated bodies must be brought forward along with my body… –Merleau-Ponty
My recent work begins with my decision to act as an inquisitor—asking endless questions before believing there to be answers. The work is driven by observation and investigation by way of the production of images. Images as research, research as art, both serving a specific desire to produce questions. More explicitly, what could it mean to say I “know” something and then also say I “see” something?
In trying to articulate what my work does, I question my perception of the life-world, and the results, internal and external, of my perception, conscious and unconscious. As an inquisitor I find it useful to think in terms of perspectives and/or platforms. The term “platform” creates multiple entry points for this work, becoming a literal, abstract, tangible, and/or referential way in which to read, experience, digest and approach it. Like Merleau-Ponty, I question what we give attention to and why we give it to one thing or another. Note: still trying to revise this last sentence.

Critic’s Statement (pdf)
RISE UP YOU LOVELY CHILDREN OF SATURN
Gregory Sholette, June 2005
http://gregorysholette.com