Artist: Brant Weiland

Brant Weiland, IOWA

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 STATEMENT:

I'm interested in the way a physical collection preserves and forms connections so I can better understand how objects influence an individual's perception of place and identity. My explorations stem from a curiosity of heirlooms, trophy cases, and the debris scattered around my family's farm. This culminates when I consider historical examples of reaching for a connection to the past, acknowledging the contributing factors that are built upon layers of lived experience and chance.

Pulling from both systematic organization and the informal excavations of my surroundings to set the guidelines, my collections show how a grouping of objects inherently forms a narrative through touchstones of personal memory. I utilize mold-making primarily for its ability to borrow from the world, reproducing impressions from slip morphs objects into ghostly echoes, oscillating between the universal and the individual. Practicing different formats lets me play with the role of curation, each time holding a mirror to what I find important, simultaneously reflecting a bit of myself as well.

When I consider the archives of information accumulated, the depth of foundations built upon, or generations of knowledge borrowed from, I am awed and overwhelmed by this history and its potential for the future. Looking at collective narratives or family trees, it appears that a continuous arc of progress leads to the present. The map is neat, continuous, and digestible, but a more critical examination would find whole tracts lost due to erosion or overgrowth, the gaps filled with myth and stories.

As I attempt to make sense of a multitude, I turn to objects familiar to me, dredging up embodied memories from my core. My responses form by recreating the objects by hand or exploring means of manufacturing, borrowing items both from the personal and the universal. Through the production of multiples, I begin to understand how accumulation results from habitual patterns of human behavior. While combining objects in different contexts, I examine the way actions become symbolic, allowing me to excavate the self via unconscious associations. I invite viewers to reflect on the role entropy and preservation play within the artwork so we may understand them as contributing factors, progressively interwoven, built upon layers of experience and chance.

CV