DAVID GIBSON WRITING

  Identity is the cornerstone of our being and the means by which we impose some small degree of order upon the world, which is always in a state of growth and flux. What we may or may not comprehend is that identity itself is likewise in flux, and though we may often hold to the belief that it represents a fixed quantity, we are hard-pressed to decide which elements define our individual ideas of our selves. In history, when mankind has been in a state of doubt, it has searched for symbols to represent the qualities it most admires or despises. Those first took the form of mythology, then later of religious devotion, and much later—and in some ways finally—the precepts of science. The journey through belief is itself a journey to self-knowledge, and it is through art that man has often found himself seated before not only a fount of valuable learning, but also before a mystery whose purpose has yet to be told. Individual artists throughout history have created oeuvres that presen

To be an Installation artist in the 1980s was to be extremely creative in a form generally perceived to be approaching its grandfatherly phase. Born out of concerns related to the urban experience, and added to that the new availability of huge loft “spaces” in the early days of   New York’s SoHo art neighborhood, Installation Art drew attention to a concept of spectacle that borrowed its formal constraint from a sense of objectness. These two elements may seem immediately at odds with one another: the spectacle and the objects, but a spectacle is an event dependent upon the arrangement of given objects, or people. It is perhaps best described as a rearrangement of expectation, and the use of objects or materials in an uncommon manner allows it to be fulfilled more successfully. As people do not conform their everyday activities to the unusual state of affairs that normally creates a spectacle, it is instead formulated among their myriad interactions and the varied uses of