In the series Stature, I created the enclosing stage and every object within by casting concrete and clay from discarded consumer electronics packaging. The negative space of the trash becomes the positive space of the construction. The cast objects are not glued or affixed to each other, but are balanced in tenuous arrangements that vary from abstract to highly anthropomorphic “monsters.” The choices of polystyrene forms and concrete as a medium provide an indirect means to explore the discards and inversions of capitalist endeavor. In the forms  I have embedded references that interest and influence me, from surrealist painting to Latin American brutalist architecture to Ursula Schulz-Dornburg’s images of post-Soviet era bus stops in Armenia.The use of concrete also references the physicality of institutions, and the way in which the ubiquity of concrete in institutional structures embeds the power of the institution in the material. I allow his photographic constructions to become monsters as a way to talk about the authority we give bureaucratic structures; we build institutions because we need them, then we gift them with power and authority, and then we fear them. The sculptures in Journeyman further speak to the visceral experience of institutional visual language. Viewed from above, the ceramic works resemble engines, machine parts isolated from any recognizable function, sitting in solitary confinement in the floor and lit in a way reminiscent of altars.