[statement]

In my video work, I combine physically strenuous and meditative acts with the painful, humorous and tragic. These actions are intrinsically odd, based on acquiescence to childlike and/or immediate impulses, as well as playful absurdities that normally are repressed. As time progresses, the acts become ceremonies of releasing weakness and sorrow, rituals of lamentation. All aesthetic choices give way to a pursuit of perfection and attention to procedure. The compositions are tight and premeditated, although the action taking place is intuitive and unplanned. I maintain a reductive use of space, color, form and action. The works are enacted in vacant environments without the presence of an audience. These selective choices develop the structure of another world: a world that remains a part of the present while the space transforms into a cavernous limbo that is sometimes purgatory and other times home.

joy whalen