Artist Statement | Cecily Culver

Culver's recent works are part of an ongoing exploration into the agentive role of the overlooked minutia of the everyday and also the impossibility of grasping the experience of a non-human thing. These foreign entities persist with or without an audience and actively shape not only our reality but, ecology and yet recede from our full comprehension. 

 “The key, the inner formula of a mango, a willow tree or a flat smooth stone, is never grasped; the real thing is before our perception as a task for exploration. But the real thing is not the sum of all that we have recorded of it; it closes in upon itself, remains exterior, always beyond all that our perceptual samplings have turned up of it, not a given but an external ordinance.” - Alphonso Lingis 

 These quotidian moments are the outcome of a refocusing of attention and a somewhat futile ontological exploration into a life closer to the ground. Specific moments of urban banality are recreated as mysterious samplings and urge consideration of these lively things as active players in this world.

Street Swell, 2016 

Concrete, foam, plaster, chicken wire, hypertufa, plexiglass, varnish, paint, and flat screen television with recorded video. 

102 x 70 x 9 inches

Palm Creep, 2015 

Concrete, foam, chicken wire, steel, and mechanized palm frond. 

13 x 26 x 5.5 inches

2nd Ave Manhole, 2016 

Concrete, foam, chicken wire, mylar, paint, Tft screens, recorded video, and audio system with audio recorded from 2nd Avenue in Sunset Park. 

65 x 54 x 9 inches