| The person that the artist knows best and can control the most is the self. The possibilities of self-deceit are reduced to a minimum and a control of the subject matter is presented to the gaze of the spectator. These sculptural works are not only about capturing an individual, analysis of expressions, strengths, and limitations, but also an exploration of parallel universes of unanswerable questions and the big “ifs” of personal history. In my early sculptural work I examined a psychic makeup of an individual, inner struggles and debates within oneself, unfolding into a visual nonlinear diary. |  |
Richard Stipl
The person that the artist knows best and can control the most is the self. The possibilities of self-deceit are reduced to a minimum and a control of the subject matter is presented to the gaze of the spectator. These sculptural works are not only about capturing an individual, analysis of expressions, strengths, and limitations, but also an exploration of parallel universes of unanswerable questions and the big “ifs” of personal history. In my early sculptural work I examined a psychic makeup of an individual, inner struggles and debates within oneself, unfolding into a visual nonlinear diary. Later in creating sculptural compositions, paintings, and dioramas I came to the realization that exploring the self in turn is not merely presented in psychologically charged, body-oriented sculptures, but draws from theatrical elements of tableau, composition, dark humor, sequence, and motion.
I started to function as a theatre director who determines the placement of actors on stage and the importance of relationships and interactions, as well as dimensions of space, resulting in a situation. Situation, a position of the self through variables, is the essence of the work. Sometimes it involves the outcome, the development of many to see that there is no correct way of being, and that every identity is a process. This then introduces the idea that we position ourselves in roles of which we are unaware. I learned these lessons well while witnessing the struggle for survival in refugee camps as a child, and later jockeying for positions in the hierarchies of Western societies.
Last year I returned to painting after an intense period of sculpting. In this four-part, large-format, 7-by-9-foot paintings, I further explored my ongoing interest in the kitsch of pathos through the humors: melancholic, choleric, sanguine, and phlegmatic, and presented them within corresponding hallucinatory, epic landscapes. In the latest work the figures start to occupy a world of their own. Through the creation of dioramas and the merging of painting and sculpture, the figures are allowed to act out what they were always meant to be, actors in the large drama, tackling big existentialist questions. The challenge is bringing together many disciplines into a singular expression, that of painting, sculpture, prop, costume and scenery making, and of photography and video. The dioramatic installation Oblivious Obvious; Choleric will be included in a traveling exhibition curated by David McFadden at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York in 2011.
