8. Chad Wys

Chad on Chad:

I was born in Illinois in 1983 and I still live and play there today.  Despite always having had the urge to grab a crayon or a camera, I'm something of an artistic recluse.  It has taken some time for me to get used to the idea of sharing my work.  As my voice has grown stronger with many things to say, I have found the prospect of sharing experiences through art quite advantageous.  Incidentally, many of the conversations in my own work are about art itself.  What does art mean to me?  What purpose does it serve in my life and in the lives of other folks?  What are the "boundaries" and what are the "limits" of the art experience?

Deconstruction is a major part of my thought process in and out of the studio.  Academically, I am pursing a study of art theory and criticism and I reward myself by writing about the problems and triumphs occurring in the art universe today as well as in the past—I thoroughly enjoy taking contemporary ideas into the past and considering things in new ways.  In my writing I use theoretical frameworks to negotiate a more lucid and dynamic understanding of culture and how culture interacts with the visuality that permeates there.

A major strand throughout much of my work, beyond the broader inquirers into what art means socially, is the notion of object: object ownership, objectification of history, objectification of people, objectification of artwork and its many mediums; etc.  I often explore/exploit the idea of objecthood: how we decorate our lives with arbitrary, as well as meaningful, things; how we objectify the ones we love and the strangers we see; how we objectify pain and death; how we objectify complex and sensitive cultural histories.

My artwork is also, at its core, an experiment in composition, color, and form. Through a variety of mixed media I have chosen as my inspiration a color palette that is at times complimentary and at other times destructively contradictory. The literal destruction of an object is secondary to the overall effect created by color (dis)harmony and the overall aesthetic of the reclaimed and reinvented object/experience. I openly play with the allure of foreign and aggressive new colors and forms into otherwise familiar and traditional settings. Barriers and obstacles are thereby created between the viewer and the object through which one must negotiate an understanding of what is both present and hidden.

My readymade works frequently deal with the re-contextualization of decorative art objects.  By retooling the object and then re-presenting it before the viewer I intend to add new layers to the conversation of the original object.  By reclaiming these objects I mean to acknowledge how our possessions (can) (do) define us. In so many innumerable ways the bric-a-brac of our lives becomes a unit of measure of our own worth.  I enjoy infiltrating this territory of being and I revel in pointing to the superficial and the deeply intrinsic character traits in all of us.

See more work Chad HERE