JOEL KISER

Statement

My autobiographical approach to art explores first hand knowledge of the materials, the men, and experiences that make up the mythology of the oilfield. My sculptures claim the landscape of the pedestal. The visceral surfaces reference dry, cracked mud and the detritus that litters the ravaged terrain of with which I am familiar with. I went in search of a pedestal that I could claim as my own; free of the institutional baggage that once claimed the landscape of the pristine pedestal. The journey into the landscape of the pedestal began when I realized that the pedestal represents the physical and symbolic transition from ground flatland to sculptural space land. The answer then was to embrace the identity of the pedestal. Upon searching the vast open territory of the pedestal surface for a place to insert my ceramic forms, I discovered that the only logical next step was to begin excavation of the pedestal surface itself and to declare these pedestal forms as monumental objects of their own standing.

In my film and video works, I investigate the past and present terrain of popular culture and conventional media. Through such gestures as stretching, rearranging, erasing, and cutting, the familiar is rendered unfamiliar and, in that moment, a new layer of comprehension is born. I use what might be called gestural use of editing. Whether through looping, repetition, erasure, or compression, I actively manipulate the medium that recalls the importance that Richard Sierra gave to action in 1967-68, when he composed Verb List: a list of actions that a sculptor could use to create sculpture -"to roll, to crease, to fold, to cut," and so on. Appropriating preexisting photographs and films as "readymade" source material, I create uncanny often humorous imagery that compels the beholder to reflect upon unnoticed yet significant details that exist at the margins of popular media-and, as such celebrity culture.

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