Robert Costello
In this body of work I am engaging with the ways that meaning and imagery interact. I take interest in the ways that meaning is assigned and the ways that images and their meanings change over time and in varying circumstances. An image and its meaning(s) age together, perhaps not gracefully. There is a cultural relativism in play that adjusts the meaning of images to fit contemporary interests. Witches and devils, once sources of terror and human atrocity, and so they are still, are now also images for the entertainment of children. In other words, meaning is engineered and updated, it’s genetics modified.
I partake in this engineering by setting up patterns and narrative structures where the ever-enthralling concept of duality permeates. “High” and “low” cultural overlap. Common holiday iconography is heavily culled, leaving behind simple geometric forms. These elements of modest origins are put into dialogue with the histories of abstraction and minimalism in fine art. Flatness of color suggests two-dimensional space, while color selection and varied application speak of visual depth. The precision of masking is set against the haphazardness of incidental rendering and gesture. In the objects I make there is a playful austerity. There is thingness in them and there is surface.
Robert Costello,
http://www.robertcostello.net/index.php?/statement/
