Chad Curtis

Anatomy Series

Technology has become the filter through which, principally, the world is viewed. In fact, technology, defined as the sum of a culture’s practical knowledge, has always been the filter through which the world is viewed and, in that sense, this experience is not new. What is relatively new to modern time is the belief that technology will somehow save us and that progress will change the outcome of our existence, despite the fact that the physiological concerns of our bodies remain.The anatomy series is a hybrid: it is portable, it is body, it is machine, it is visceral. It collapses the anatomy of the body and the industrial machine, both metaphorically and literally, to define its structure, to objectify and make a commodity of the body, and approaches materials in a way that addresses the physiology of both. This work speaks to the vain attempt to preserve my existence, and uses materials, particularly clay, which has such a lengthy historical record of preservation, and, plastic, a contemporary preservation material, to invoke this dialogue.

This work attempts to examine the nature of nature, a lofty endeavor, through the most common and mundane: the body, the discarded objects of our society, the objects we use daily and never really consider. It attempts to address the unspoken, the taboo, to seduce through the slick nature of the craft, to engage in a dialogue of seduction, vulnerability, sexuality, and desire. It is in this sense that I see this work as a modern-day Wunderkammern, a desire to bring nature inside, to be curious and fascinated by the unknown, to examine this dialogue in the most banal realm, the domestic.