Jason Kaufman

 

Artist Statement for Zero Point Field Series

The Universe is continually throwing up forms, as Earth’s immense ocean casts sea-wrack up from its depths onto the shore to be drawn back again by the receding tide. In the same way each sculpture is the remaining trace of my participation as a local creator/destroyer within the universe.

In my work I am meditating on the mystery of existing. Beings and forms seem to congeal from nothing and dissolve back into nothingness. By contemplating this I encounter the ultimate mystery which is the flat ground of uncreated pure potentiality from which each act of creation emerges and the source back into which every form eventually returns. Through art I can align my mode of existing with the dynamic cycle of integration/disintegration that sustains the universe.

Prior to each sculpture there is only my unshaped intention and sheer potentiality. Within the flat ground delineated by the sculpture’s frame; forms, colors, and textures begin to emerge. Some persist. Others are swallowed up in the emergence of new forms, colors, and textures, but the ghosts of all remain, burnt into the object like an after image. Long after I have passed, these traces of my being and intention will weather, rot, and rust and return to the earth. And I, much alive now, marvel at what specters must remain beyond the limits of the diaphane.