BRIAR CRAIG

Artist Statement

The role I have increasingly taken as an artist is that of editor. I choose, edit, juxtapose and then present images and texts that are compilations of the things I see and record in my daily life. By employing Dada-like systems of chance I endeavor to engage the viewer in a kind of game where they unravel, interpret or re-interpret the things I have brought together. By shifting the order of words in a popular advertising campaign the potential meaning is changed. By juxtaposing words from one comic book to an image of another new content arises. By placing fragments of two images together a dialogue is created as an amalgam of those partial bytes of information. Etc.

Taking Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author as my starting point I am playing with the idea that we are all the authors of the works we see. We will interpret and make sense of what we have before us in idiosyncratic and personal ways. I believe this kind of active interpretation is done on a daily basis as we journey through the barrage of visual and textual information we all constantly consume.

As a foundation of mass communication printmaking is ideally suited as a means to further explore the idea of messages and messaging in 21st century society.