Mark Wonsidler

Mark Wonsidler

Medium: Sculpture, objects, installation

Artist Statement:
I am a sculptor and object-maker interested in the multiple intersections of the decorative, queerness, and what Flannery O’Connor called “the terrible speed of mercy.”¹

I am curious about hierarchies that play out in the world of objects: essential vs. excessive, rigorous vs. pleasurable, made vs. found, useful vs. useless. I work with materials and ideas often marginalized as low or domestic and find that the critiques of these-along with the decorative-often run parallel to cultural positions historically entangled in a fear of “the other” in terms of race, gender, or desire. By focusing on decorative and often domestic found objects and on craft materials like paper, paste, cardboard, and fabric, I seek to reclaim a space for the decorative, transforming it from what Adolf Loos called a “criminal” indulgence into a vital structural force.²

In my current practice, I strive to confuse the boundaries between intrinsic structure and applied embellishment. I often build with relatively flimsy materials that gain integrity only through the application of successive layers. In this process, the surface becomes the very thing that holds the structure together-the “superficial” becomes the “essential”. By playing with exaggerated or
even ludicrous interpretations of ornament, I push the work beyond the usual proportions of taste to see where the minimal and maximal might contend with one another.

This exploration frequently manifests in polyvalent forms-oddities, whimsies, or follies-that resist easy categorization. In this light, I am interested in domestic objects masquerading as works of art: lamps, vases, or furniture that are really sculptures (or vice-versa). These identity-fluid objects become sites for imagining queer domesticity, presence, and pleasure. However, the inquiry has evolved beyond any single typology of forms. It is equally likely that the result will be something outside of language or difficult to name. Whether I am manipulating found objects or engaging in improvisational construction, I am searching for an intuitive “queer affect” that might play out across any number of named or unnameable forms.

Ultimately, my goal is not to simply invert the old hierarchies, but to eliminate them altogether. I seek to arrive at forms whose “name-ability” is dissolved into an uncategorizable queerness-an improvisatory state where the status of the object is constantly shifted through markers of aesthetic intensity (as opposed to taste) and the disruptive potential of the decorative.

1 O’Connor, Flannery. The Violent Bear It Away. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1960.
2 Loos, Adolf. “”Ornament and Crime,”” 1908. Les Cahiers d’aujourd’hui (Paris,1913).