THESIS EXHIBITION: March 15 - 18

Opening Reception: March 17, 6 - 8pm

U.S. Code § 8(d), 2022, 60x36x20 

Hostile, 2022, 21x42x13 

Artist Statement

My work explores the clash of the two worlds I find myself in. From rural Pennsylvania to urban Philadelphia, my work is coming to terms with the problematics of each: exploring nationalism, colonialism, and masculinity while also examining conservation, class, and hostile architecture. My work operates as a means of critiquing these places, while validating my part within them. Through this push and pull, I’m essentially critiquing myself to understand and confront my role within these systems. Ultimately, I’m working with the known/unknown, rural/urban, nostalgia/critique, and finding my place in between.  

Using chainsaw carving and its history of representation reflecting the values of its community, themes of masculinity, nationalism, and dominance are interwoven with a kitsch and romanticism. I’m interested in the confliction of those themes within the objects themselves to address the wider implication of the medium culturally. 

With projection and video, interventions of an observer traveling through the city, the passive eye attempts to become active through the display and stitching of raw material.  

Assemblage combines symbols, representational or conceptual, to ground the rest of the work together. The objects on their own have contexts and connotations. I combine them to reinforce, conflict and alter.  

More information about Ethan Storms available at ethanstorms.com

All photos credited to the artist.