Statement

Eight years ago I started collecting paintings from art school trash bins in New York City. Ever since, I have been using these abandoned paintings on canvas to create sculptures.

Until recently, I would cut and reshape the paintings that I found and would glue them together in my works to create collage sculptures. However, through exploring the theme of failure, I came to understand that if I transformed the original works then I would no longer be honoring the true integrity of the painting. For this reason I decided to keep the paintings intact and in their complete, original form in which I found them.

Recently I stated to create installations where I present artists’ failures in their raw form. I assemble the original paintings together to create large sculptures of different shapes and sizes and incorporate recycled bottle caps and other found objects into my installations to compliment the colors in the paintings.

Through my work, I would like to give homage to failure. I would like to engage the public to honor the importance of failing and taking risks in life. In this particular case, I explore the importance of the artist to fail at painting. Failure is a key step in growing as a person and I believe that we should respect our failures and be encouraged to take risks–even if they could result in failure.

Risking is a necessary step to take in order to evolve into greatness. Our society tends to encourage succeeding but to discourage failing. However, this attitude completely overlooks the fact that it takes a lot of failing to succeed.

For this reason, it gives me great pleasure to revive these ‘failed’ paintings and to give homage to them.