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ARTIST STATEMENT: “What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms, a sum, in short, of human relationships which, rhetorically and poetically intensified, ornamented, and transformed, come to be thought of, after long usage by a people, as fixed, binding, and canonical. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions, worn out metaphors, now important to stir the senses, coins which lost their faces and are considered now as metal rather than as currency.” - Friedrich Nietzsche Art, it follows, consists of illusions that declare themselves as such, but in so doing, sharpens understanding of our uncertain relation to truth. Art now exists in some strange new forms. Nothing can be proven; everything is open to discussion; everything is more a truth claim than a stable argument. All knowledge, including art, has a social bases and is supported by the shared culture of the society in which the knowledge (art, science, history) is produced. These are articles of cultural faith, they are conventions. My conviction is that language, or discourse, is fundamental to any art. I reject any version of the ideal of a universal essence, totality, or center as a basis for art. I believe that the object is not a constellation of matter releasing a single "theological" meaning, the message of the artist, but a multidimensional space in which a variety of meanings, none of them original, blend and clash. Ideological traditions always try to disguise their conventionality or arbitrariness by presenting themselves as natural or pure. My work is therefore an interchange between representation or language and object. I use wax because of its translucent and skin like qualities. Wood is a natural material that adds to the physicality of the pieces. Different texts are used to provoke meaning, or to empty meaning out, with an attempt to reveal the meaning a viewer automatically brings to the work. - Jens Brasch, 2004
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