Gary Sczerbaniewicz

Lives and works in Buffalo, NY, USA

Artist statement

Gary Sczerbaniewicz www.garysczerbaniewicz.net ARTIST STATEMENT My practice involves an insatiable fascination with architectural spaces that evoke a sense of psychological unease. This compulsion toward an aesthetics of anxiety leads me to fabricate confined space environments which include-scale shifts-using architectural models blended into full-sized structures into which the viewer is invited to physically enter and explore. These hybrid constructions inhabit a tenuous space between architecture, environment, installation, sculpture, and theatrical stagecraft. I seek to disorient the viewer in an attempt to break the staid, often detached, passive, and familiar approach to consuming artworks. I believe that it is in this hermetic space where authentic communication between artist and viewer occurs. To this end I employ tactics of individual viewer experience-such as compelling the spectator/ inhabitant to crawl, crouch, lay, or adopt an atypical body position as they explore the confines and sensory stimuli of the piece. My recent work investigates the concept of cognitive dissonance as articulated through an architectural lexicon. I am drawn to create works in which an unknown, sudden, violent event has rendered a space inert, transforming it from its original intended function into a hybrid and liminal zone. A recovering child of both Catholicism and the Cold War, my works possess a keen fondness for the post-apocalyptic, the weird, the eerie, and various forms of...

Artwork