Joe Bruns
| Joe Bruns |
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| Mirror Paddles Glass mirror, wood, enamel, leather. 2012 |
| Artist StatementI explore masculinity, privilege, and personal relationships while utilizing the beauty in everyday language and materials. The work often uses processes and materials with significancean unashamed and multimodal pairing of forms and subjectivity. Through a decidedly queer and often sexualized perspective, I also make reference to very universal themes surrounding humanityyearning, remorse, and attraction. I’m deeply inspired by historical and current narratives of queerness within the art world, and the community at large.The ongoing series of performance projects, “Signaling” (2011—) is an unfolding language of interpersonal communication through the prism of spatial proximity and distance. At Joshua Tree State Park, outside Los Angeles, the radical environmental shift encouraged me to use survival tools to communicate ideas of distance and intimacy as they relate to my partner.The ongoing series using paddles has provided an opportunity to explore, critique, and falsify my own sexual pursuits. At times I become a performer and portray myself with an aggressive attitude. In other instances, I use the form of the paddle as a canvas to express my own sexuality, desire and the inevitable influences society plays on these elements. |
