Michael Pittman

Michael Pittman – Artists Statement

In my practice I create images and three-dimensional constructions. I am interested in the way that we choose to divide our internal and external worlds, and the way that they sometimes overlap. I am inspired by my research, which often takes me in many directions simultaneously: medicine, folklore, history, and geography. Once the “facts” are released from their context, I use them freely within a highly personalized framework.

When I make images or things, I am projecting my accumulated psychological experience onto a specific subject. By formulating a very internal response, to what otherwise may be an ambiguous experience, and transcribing it as an image or a concrete thing, the result is something that is highly representative of the particular way that I decode the world. Though the resultant image may seem diarist, there is commonality in the way that we all process and internalize experience, and I feel this is what viewers respond to in my work.

I embrace the ambiguous or polysomic nature of images and objects: the uncertainty of meaning, the “terror of uncertain signs” (Barthes). There is an uncanniness or a disquieting strangeness that pervades the almost-familiar image; an uncomfortable instability is aroused by its unfixed or “floating” meaning. Through my imagery and materials I try to reflect, highlight and sometimes deconstruct the processes by which we perceive and process all information.