Citizen of the Year (2011)

A sculpture composed of objects from the teenage artist's room literally transposed from their physical orientation in the artist's suburban Arizona home to the gallery.

Full Description

Objects from a corner of the artist's room arranged in their approximate literal position on furniture in the gallery. Investigative of the life of a contemporary teenager involved with the Internet. The work draws contrast between the dehistoricized version of a person's social image and the deeply historicized figure of that person, as well as compares the relationship between the "coming-of-age" mentality and the lurid anxiety of adolescence with the instantaneous, evolutionary status of the Internet and popular culture. By looking at a minimally edited fraction of the teenage artist's room, we notice a number of relics from the artist's personal history (consolatory awards from school, toys, pictures, dated video games, drawings) as well as glimpses of the adolescent pursuit of legitimacy and masculinity and involvement with the Internet (Old Spice "Swagger" deodorant, Swiss Army pocket knife with flash drive, digital camera adapter).

Work metadata

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Artist Statement

Ryder Ripps, the curator of LikeArtBasel, informed me of the show's Internet-aware focus and suggested using pre-existing objects I interact with, in their unaltered form. A closer inspection of the "random" objects surrounding me in their "natural" orientation and relationships with one another provoked a number of compelling thoughts about adolescence, the nature of the social individual on the Internet, and the occasional randomness and immediacy of the artistic process itself.

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