Tyler Calkin

Artist’s statement:
My work examines the body as a locus of lived experience in a spatial world of shared influences and perceptions. Investigating the nature of reality, my work offers visualized embodiment to the viewer. I represent and interpret aspects of humanity such as existence, temporality, sensation, and perception, and relate these ideas through evolving formal and conceptual methods of representation to alter and expand upon worldviews that inspire me.

Drawings on layered translucent paper express the ever-present yet hidden bodily layers, giving physicality to the depth and reality of the body that is usually absent in a two-dimensional drawing. Video projections place these layers in a temporal and three-dimensional light. Thickly handled paint explores the physical weight behind the sense of touch, and the life that exists within even the extremities of physical bodies. The outer edges of our bodies connect people with their environs in a “double horizon” of environmental and bodily space continually in contact with each other, and by extension, other lives.

Layering images, projecting meditative cycles, and using paint as a visceral record of physical presence, I create my pieces as experiences for the viewers to interpret as the will.