Brant Weiland 

 

 

 

When I consider the archives of information accumulated, the depth of foundations built upon, or generations of knowledge borrowed from, I am awed and overwhelmed by this history and its potential for the future. Looking at collective narratives or family trees, it appears that a continuous arc of progress leads to the present. The map is neat, continuous, and digestible, but a more critical examination would find whole tracts lost due to erosion or overgrowth, the gaps filled with myth and stories.

 

 

As I attempt to make sense of a multitude, I turn to objects familiar to me, dredging up embodied memories from my core. My responses form by recreating the objects by hand or exploring means of manufacturing, borrowing items both from the personal and the universal. Through the production of multiples, I begin to understand how accumulation results from habitual patterns of human behavior. While combining objects in different contexts, I examine the way actions become symbolic, allowing me to excavate the self via unconscious associations. I invite viewers to reflect on the role entropy and preservation play within the artwork so we may understand them as contributing factors, progressively interwoven, built upon layers of experience and chance.