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Candy

Candy Windows by Kathleen Griffin

My work is about a moment that cannot last, when you see two opposites tied so tightly together you can barely tell the difference between them. This image is only a flash, the seconds when love and aggression meet, hope and despair join and beauty and ugliness combine, when things have ceased to function the way they should. My objects become a kind of figure sculpture, depicting the emotional state of the subject rather than the physical.

The objects I create are overwhelmed with a desire for something. This desire, as expressed by the materials, i.e. candy, soap, caramel, etc., becomes so excessive that the desire itself prevents its own attainment. As in my piece, “This is all that separates us”, the desire for the goodness or cleanliness, as expressed by the soap door, is so extreme that the door is too thick to ever be walked through and instead becomes a barrier, a room in itself.

In a world of constant change, the temporal materials I use call the notion of permanence into suspicion, allowing my work to be aware of its own mortality. It is important that the materials I use be real. I feel this lack of illusion brings an air of impossibility to the work.

My objects lose their function and because of it become beautiful, desirable and strange. They are most beautiful at the beginning when completely dysfunctional and only once the material, candy, soap, etc… has completely disappeared and they are plain do they become functional again.