Los Angeles, CA
Born 1968, Los Angeles, California
Empire really evolved over a four-year period in which I created and lived in a sort of landscape of books, images, histories, etc. I suppose part of the idea was to use the landscape as the material of the piece. I had been interested in the idea that the purpose of an artwork is not to transmit information or meaning, but is rather to mediate or pattern information or meaning in a way that matches its cultural and temporal context. Creating a world out of images, books, ideas, histories allowed me to sort of mainline this, to construct a sort of boiled-down version or model, based on the sort of pre-packaged information different types of media provide. I ended up combining many patterns of information or meaning relating to specific histories, images, and bodies of knowledge to create a new structure based on the nature of their combination. In doing so I think an environment was created in which linear time was unimportant.
1999 M.F.A., University of California, Los Angeles
1992 B.A., University of California, Berkeley
2003 Paul Sietsema: Empire, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, catalogue.
2002 Regen Projects, Los Angeles
1998 Brent Petersen Gallery, Los Angeles
2003 Inaugural Exhibition, Regen Projects, Los Angeles.
2001 The Americans: New Art, curated by Mark Sladen, Barbican Art Galleries, London.
2001 Sonsbeek 9: Locus/Focus, curated by Jan Hoet, Arnhem, The Netherlands, catalogue and artist book.
2001 Drawings, Regen Projects, Los Angeles
2001 Bright Paradise: Exotic History and Sublime Artifice: The 1st Auckland Triennial, The University of Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand, catalogue.
2000 oo, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, catalogue
2000 L.A., Monika Spruth & Philomene Magers, Cologne, Germany; Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center, Athens, Greece.
2000 Mise en Scene: New Los Angeles Sculpture, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA; CCAC Institute, 2001, catalogue
1999 Los Angeles, Galerie Philomene Magers and Maximilian Verlag, Munich, Germany
1999 The Perfect Life; Artifice in L.A., Duke University Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina, catalogue
1998 Local Heroes, Beyond Baroque, Venice, California
1998 Transfiction I/Transfiction II, Charim Klocker Gallery, Vienna, Austria
Empire Film Still #5
Empire Film Still #10