Diana Falchuk - Statement
I am fascinated with the aesthetics and social treatment of objects that are deemed past their prime, original utility or safe consumption: a rotten strawberry, a weather-worn blue mailbox, an illegible old letter. I use relics of these objects as building blocks for a new and uncanny existence in my drawings, sculptures and installations. In compliment to my public works, which venerate and give new life to worn and overlooked public fixtures (utility poles, post office boxes), my small sculptures and drawings are based on my private collection of carefully aged and reconfigured artifacts. I scar, discolor and otherwise degrade an ever-growing collection of bodies – fruits and vegetables, meat, flowers, textiles, found plastics and other fibers. I carefully alter and combine their degraded remains to form impossible hybrids that call to mind ancient organisms and strangely familiar keepsakes. My drawings take inspiration both from my sculptures’ irregular surfaces and conglomerate forms, and from my image store of buildings, art, food, flora, clothing, animals and people that are deteriorated naturally through aging, or more violently by war or disease. I am lately moved to draw these delicate bits of destruction banded together with vital objects (fresh foods, plants and tools), as an optimistic response to the threats of decay and extinction facing our physical world.