Michelle Acuff

Surrogate
polystyrene, steel, porcelain, caution tape, lawn ornaments, cones

As a sculptor, photographer and installation artist, I involve viewers in a phenomenological situation, in which the experience of objects and images is ambiguous, corporal and direct. During the last year I have been developing works that consider our increasingly tenuous connection to the natural world.

My imagery springs from diverse sources, in which actual and mediated visions blur. Fundamentally, I’m interested in how we construct knowledge from landscapes, experience, myth and history, both art historical and natural.

The use of ersatz imagery and objects allows me to juxtapose the universal and ideal against the original and specific; the commercially and industrially produced, against the sedulously hand-made.

The tensions that emerge chronicle a reality in which natural and human-made entities coexist and collide, effectively erasing any useful distinctions between them. Some scientists and artists describe this as a kind of postnatural condition, in which all objects and processes are tangled in a mesh of social, political and biological relations.