Karl Unnasch
Chatfield, MN
Residency: March-April 2009
Project Description
While at Sculpture Space, I was able to further explore my inner hobbyist. Utica was a haven for inspiration, providing me with materials I gleaned from various local outlets. I constructed several road-kill castings into surreal vignettes replete with touchstone landscape narratives. The Studio’s available electric kiln allowed me to investigate the transformation of reclaimed glass into newer, succulent objects for further expansion of my work. My investigation of antique collecting as hobby inspired the making of Analog, a multi-recontextualization piece I would not have been able to make elsewhere. Nearing the end of the residency, I set up and enacted an aluminum casting workshop for the other artists-in-residence. This workshop was met with much success. Each artist made a complete finished piece as a result.
About the Artist
I am interested in the societal bandwidth I call “peripheral artistic culture,” or “hobbyism” as a creative pursuit whose end results are honestly, passionately, and often obsessively sought for the enjoyment and satisfaction of an audience of one; the self. It is the very parallels I draw between peripheral artistic culture and islolationism that I find to be of utmost importance. These parallels serve to symbolically buttress my portrayals of the clashes between order (urbanization) and entropy (nature). These clashes are quietly referenced in the miniature landscapes constructed upon/within the work. Reclaimed urban detritus such as salvaged objects and dead fauna are selected as physical and subjective foundations. Dead organic matter and scrap debris are often seen as unpleasant or ugly, hence fantastic settings are pieced together upon these harsh realities of death and loss as a means of escape from horror, investigation of subject, and consideration of beauty. Often I work to draw the viewer toward points of interest and contemplation within these works by changing the familiar context of the materials and narrative(s). As the viewer is seduced to approach, one will discover various adjusted stages whereby a former familiar observation is stripped away and a new prospect is revealed.