Dragonslayer by Alexander Hanson

Alexander Hanson

I want to know how we think we can ascertain anything optimistic about the world when we insist on looking through dirty glasses. My creative research focuses on the use of objects, constructed and found, as a way to ask pointed questions related to faith; and the use or abuse of it in everyday life. My work often takes form through installation or built environments; I use a variety of materials and objects to create instances where the viewer is invited to enter into a constructed fiction.

I attempt to make work that invites, allows and provides people with the opportunity to see the world differently. I am interested in contradiction and how we use models and principles that do not stand on their own legs to value and derive meaning. I aim to create work that illuminates the complications behind seeing the world narrowly. I want to highlight the futility, hopelessness, and failure behind the challenge of extracting a pure or unadulterated meaning of the pieces of the puzzle we are given.

Consider what it means to be broken vs. what it means to be altered. Consider everything is fragile and at any moment everything can change. Consider what makes us make decisions could possibly not be our soul or our learned experiences, but the balance or imbalance of certain chemicals in our blood at any given point in time. Consider we take part in destroying a world it is in our best interest to preserve. Consider in order to fix a hole, you have to destroy a pile of dirt.

I employ sculpture as a way to point a finger at our conceived notions of truth and use symbols and objects to invite the viewer to use irreverent skepticism to freely laugh at, poke holes in and make light of those ideas as a last ditch effort to fully understand them. If magic doesn’t exist, then that is just fine; but rather than mourning, we should rejoice, because we should prefer a world where that is the case.

I want to be able to constantly reconsider what I often believe to be underlying reasons for how to live a good life and how to make the right decision. What is right and what is wrong is never so simple. I want to know what joy is and how to find a real and lasting version of it. I attempt to introduce an audience to instances that can produce despair in the hope of moving them beyond paralysis in the face of seemingly hopeless situations. I want to be the person to shake people off the fence, not just so I can watch them fall, but so I can catch them before they hit the ground.

There will be an artist talk given by Alexander Hanson on March 15th, 2018 at 4:30 pm.