Ben Valentine
Artist Statement
People create an object’s meaning, and these meanings change from place to place and over time. An acre of land in NYC is different than an acre in Wyoming. Similarly, a long sword was once a powerful weapon that has become a collectors item. Everything, including us, is in a process of growth or collapse. This work, How to Make a Pure Form, explores these ideas through an ongoing participatory process of reduction.
How to Make a Pure Form plays with the context of a traveling show that has a size limit by never be the same size twice. The wooden cube, a modernist ideal of pure form, will slowly be sanded and altered, becoming an entirely new form for every show. The viewer decides what the piece will become for the next audience. This process becomes a proposal for collective involvement, a belief that everyone can be an artist, and should directly and aesthetically interact with the world around them.
The process asks many questions of the viewer — What forms will occur and who gets credit for those forms? What is a pure form? Will you, the viewer, involve yourself or simple observe? What should we protect and what should we allow to change? Unlike most art, How to Make a Pure Form has a lifespan, it will be over when the wood has been completely sanded away.
Biography
I was raised in Richmond, IN, where I graduated from Earlham College when I was 19 years old. I Interned for a year at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, I have shown work nationally, founded a blog/art space,
and I have curated several shows. I moved to Brooklyn, NY a year ago and have been working for one of my favorite artists ever since.
Artist’s Website
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