DUSTIN T KELLY

Artist Statement

 

As an artist, I’m interested in mixing and conflating the aesthetics of pop-cultural forms with the formal and critical histories of the art world. The goal is to use the aesthetic syntax of one text to question or complexify the other, to force a dialogue between the ideologies inherent within the material, form, and concept.  

 

The themes I attempt to deal with in my work are what I think of as the big ones: memory, time, family, death, eternity. On the surface these themes would appear to lie outside or above the influence of politics and capitalism, but our view of all of the above is mediated by these two systems, like trying to look at the stars through the grimy lens of a porn director’s backyard telescope.

 

As an American, I am acutely aware of the political and socioeconomic realities of my country, as well as how those realities play out specifically in the mass-psyche of the Midwest. The context of the art world allows me to set up a critical dialogue with the public about my perceptions of these realities in a way that I would be unable to accomplish in any other occupation.