Long Term Interests
My first interest is in multiple worlds.
This starts for me at about age 8. I would go to the natural history museum in Milwaukee, The Milwaukee Public Museum, with my grand parents, Henry and Catherine Klimowicz. My parent took me too but I remember my trips with my grandparents because I would give them a tour of all the great worlds. I was fascinated with the coexistence of spaces within this one large building, Old Milwaukee exists under a polar bear.
This museum is important in natural history museum history. It is one of the first to let the audience into the box or behind the glass. You walk through Old Milwaukee. The temperature in Africa is hotter then the Arctic. Sound is an important element. The audience is expected to find things and not everything will be found on your first visit. I have tried to bring most of these aspects to my own installation work.
My second interest is the use of unimportant materials.
I have used cardboard as my primary material since about 1986. It began as a response to my use of a wide range of materials. I wanted to simplify my pallet. I wanted to be able to know that the representations that I was accomplishing were ones that I was accomplishing not relationships that the materials were making for me. An example of this was my need to depict water with tin foil and wax. In the end I felt that this depiction relied to heavily on the material. when I stripped down to just cardboard I was assured that the depiction was my own.
The enhancement of the viewers respect by the materials used was also troublesome to me. I love that with cardboard the audience has to give to the work value from their own reaction to the work not from the historic understanding of value.
That on occasion the past life of the material is visible is a good thing So a bit of printing or something like that helps the work tie back to its origins. The problem is that this edge between the past and the present is very sharp. If the piece is to much an old cardboard box then it can not be seen as a transformed object.
HCK
The Art of Alexandria R. Klimowicz