John Schlesinger

Artist Statement 6/2021

I create ceiling and wall mounted assemblages built out of neon, lab equipment, resin-cast photographs and rebar pulled from demolition sites. The works triangulate a conversation between sculpture, photography and light art. I call them neon hybrids. The work mocks normative 2-dimensional mounting traditions. It cannot be shipped and simply hung. I insist on constructing the neon hybrids site-responsively, growing and grabbing across each unique space like a virus infecting its host space. The material references within my assemblages form a network of ideas that I pull from repeatedly. The photographs I deploy represent previous assemblages and installations, revealing an auto-cannibalistic slant in my relationship with own practice. Encased in resin, the photographs are at once fortified by that process, and rendered more translucent to the lighting effects of the neon. The demolition-sourced rebar presents an indexical representation of the trauma it underwent through the process of demolition. The rebar pieces emerge from the rubble like 3D scars. The lab equipment I deploy reflects my experimental and alchemistic approach to building. I cast the form of the neon to mimic the twisted, 3-dimensional drawing of the demolition rebar. The neon functions as glowing, fragile, anti-shadows of the dull, cheap metal of the rebar. Neon also serves to penetrate the surface of the photographs, lighting them both front and back. The works light themselves like deep-sea bioluminescent predators.