Michael Fox

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Artist statement

In order to define myself as an artist, I constantly resist the temptation to create something new for witnesses of my work. My intention with any experience formed by what I produce is to place the witness in a position of unease and criticality, avoiding opiate spectacles. Through the manipulation of material and space and a release from misconceptions of control, I attempt to create pataphysical spasms through which subjective conclusions can be made. The aesthetic that my work conforms to is inspired by human-driven technologies and nature driven technologies, the innovations of flux and time. A delicate red raspberry contrasts a geometric wooden structure, animated by a direct current motor. A plant is given perceivable motion through a prosthetic walking machine, always relocating it to light sources the plant would probably prefer to do without. Time is my work’s serendipity, creating growth and decay to allow for aesthetic transformation beyond my artistic successes and failures. The beauty of natural aesthetics reveal themselves through their form, color, and their alterations of a space, creating multisensory experiences. A 2013 exhibition at Gemeentemuseum titled “Yes Naturally” highlighted a now frequented term, Anthropocene, which describes an era of human impact on global environmental change. My work is scoped as an addition to this discussion. I use the raspberry to plot locations for potentially life-supporting exoplanets, in everlasting hope for...

Artwork