David Carpenter’s Artist Statement
It has been said that the world is flat. I understand this to be incorrect.
I stand in the darkness with my flashlight, looking for the horizon. Any glimpse of understanding that I gain as I move my light from side to side, quickly returns into the abyss. Moving forward, I am left with a vague understanding of my surroundings.
This ever changing point of view informs my work visually and conceptually. From this perspective, I create stories. Be it sculpture, performance or installation, these narratives are what I refer to throughout the creative process. While my technical approach varies from piece to piece, the themes of resistance, futility, struggle, and identity are woven throughout my body of work. My goal is not to map this ambiguous space, like an explorer, but to give form to my own confusion and curiosity.
What I see is a world where the background is exposed as soon as the foreground fades away, creating a continuous event that is expanding, collapsing, and folding over itself in every direction.