Artist's Statement
by Alison Stadig

I believe that contemporary art should seek to acknowledge the theoretical, while keeping a firm foot upon the experiential, if only to help overcome one of the predominant problems of postmodernism, a dislocation from the experienced real. I have two current interests. The first is the unbearable lightness of being, a term coined by Milan Kundera, intending to discuss an element of kitsch in the postmodern landscape, which I further understand through my personal experience as a state where intellectualism has no place and depth of being no reason. My second current interest is the death of humanism, an idea stating that a concern for the quality of life is misplaced in a post-pleuralistic landscape, where good or bad cannot be determined from worse, worst, better, or best. This is considered to be a result of relativistic interpretation and dislocation of value-based judgment.

In my work, I seek to discuss these issues through an ironic politicization (as both irony and politicization could be considered kitsch—despite the fact that irony often is also considered to be a negation of kitsch—thereby approaching a concern for the unbearable lightness of being). I am currently working with variations of the human form, usually the female form, to stand in as representation of humanity, pulling on variations of other artistic cannons, namely the Postmodern and Surrealist, to discuss cultural detritus, ethical disorientation, and aesthetic wasting. Through this, I hope to approach expressions of the eternal, describing the contemporary as both historically inevitable and ideologically dismembered.