ANDY VAN DINH
CAAF Residency st[art]@art central, August – September 2013
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
As an artist I struggle to remain truthful to both the medium and the message. This constant struggle helps to inform and mold my artistic process. My own experiences are infused within my paintings/drawings/installations and by exploring my own experience; I aim to make sense of the human condition. Through this, I celebrate the mundane activities that govern the way we–as human beings–actively choose (or do not choose) to imagine, to love, to lose, to forget, to long. I choose to subvert standard conventions and provide elements of surprise. To a certain extent, I aim for each piece to be a map; letting the viewer become the cartographer to dissect, interpret and reflect on their own understandings of imagining, loving, losing and forgetting. Society is governed by a standard set of ideals within these themes, but everyone’s truth is different. We each create our own reality. This is the grace that comes with using art as a means to scrutinize these common themes: we all may have a different story but every person has experienced these same feelings. In essence, my process is guided by the combination of my experiences and by the people around me: woven together in a spontaneous fashion. Create and don’t hesitate.
This current body of work aims to provoke a specific memory– high school, when things felt bigger than they really were. When we were stuck in this limbo between growing up and holding onto childhood. When we had things on our mind other than paying attention in class. When we had a naive idea of love.