Scott Oliver
I am drawn to neglected objects. Like rooting for the
underdog, I cannot help but empathize with the abject
objects I drag into my studio: Formica tabletops, electrical
cords, carpet remnants, old cafe chairs, strawberry
baskets, bits of trees, an old neck pillow. I see in them
the dramas of daily life—the tension between matter
and meaning. So the materials I use in my work have
personal resonance, but are also commonly recognizable
because they are mass-produced. In transforming
them I’m attempting to fashion the “already known” into
the “never before.”
As such I like to think about the things I make as inverse
prototypes or “aprototypical.” They do not predict a
future proliferation of similar such objects, but rather
they return the reproducible type to the finite, concrete,
and ultimately, inexchangeable present. As aprototypes
the things I make are meant to resist objectification
and become active things. That is they are meant to
invoke relationships rather than isolation. To this end I
am always looking for what is unseen in the objects—
revealing some material quality, formal possibility, or
meaning that was obscured by conventions of use.
Though my work begins with found objects, it is far
from being “ready-made.” Many of the pieces take
shape through labor-intensive transformations. Here,
the handcrafted and machine-made are brought
together using various techniques to parse and reassemble
materials into new forms. Attention to craft is
confounded by the relative “disposability” of the materials
as cultural biases about beauty, labor, and value
come into play.
Pattern and modularity are used to further blur the
distinctions between the one-of-a-kind object and the
mass-produced. While pattern and modularity are
perfectly suited to factory production lines for ease
of assembly and repeatability they also appeal to the
human mind or our “sense of order” as E. H. Gombrich
has called it. Too, we find similar orders at work in nature.
Highly subjective, my hand wrought patterns and modular
systems both mock and celebrate human ordering. They
are logical systems applied in illogical ways—often undermining
the original function of the object.
Through this process the typical dichotomies of man
and nature or man and machine begin to collapse. In
this way I hope to articulate a more holistic view of the
material world—one that is shaping us as we shape it.
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