Sean M. Starowitz, MFA 2023

THESIS EXHIBITION: March 22 - 25

Opening Reception: March 24, 6 - 8pm


Fever Dream, Charcoal on Paper, 72"x 96", 2022.  

4:3 Film Stills from "It's a problem, not an emergency", Digital Video, 17 Minutes, 2022.  


Artist Statement

Within my studio, I employ research as an artistic practice. My work investigates the power of the white imaginary’s grasp on our perception of climate change and the technological logics that haunt us today. From 19th century panoramas, to doom scrolling on iPhones, these technologies continue to perpetuate the understanding that humans are separate observers rather than participants; further subjugating nature as spectacle. 

I engage media images, cinematic imagination, and archival materials translated through drawing, sculptural works, and moving image. Often, works are layered with conceptual frameworks that intersect the ideologies of extraction, economics, labor & leisure, and politics. Each work interprets the elusive temporal horizon - shifting between linear, geologic, and futurity-based realities of time - acting as a map to consider new constellations within the perception of climate collapse. I’m interested in the future ruin in reverse, a landscape that doesn’t fall into disrepair; instead, it rises into ruin. 

More information about Sean M. Starowitz at sean-starowitz.com

All photos credited to the artist.