Porter, 2018
Braided rug, stained hay, fabricated steel, AC motor, and timer.
10’ x 9’ x 9’
Porter was 1 of 4 sculptures exhibited in ‘Brain Janitor’ at Artspace in Raleigh, North Carolina in winter 2018/19.
Porter is a kinetic sculpture with an industrial motor that causes a braided rug to dance around and flare out. A ring of black-stained hay sits on the floor seemingly left behind. The word Porter is defined as a person hired to carry burdens or baggage. This sculpture elicits interior and exterior notions by using a farmyard substance in conversation with a home-made domestic object. These materials both hold specific personal meaning discerning my upbringing and my family - in particular my mother - a strong carrier of many burdens.
Brain Janitor is a sculpture exhibition by artist Dane Winkler. It features large scale works constructed of various materials including a braided rug, papier-mâché, fabricated steel, and a hollow mattress. The works have developed out of Winkler’s vocabulary utilizing concepts and materials reminiscent of a farmyard landscape. Often times the sculptures provoke a sense of poetry harkening back to his roots related to homesteading and ones most basic needs. The sculptures characterize a mysterious familiarity to function - be it otherworldly or local. In Brain Janitor the materials elicit a more private intention as Winkler begins to explore manipulated recognizable objects alongside crafted components - What conversation develops when a used mattress inflates and deflates like an organ? By reconsidering these forms through transformations their impressions are modified. How can objects become alive in their gesture or action? These substances are taken out of context compared with more inscrutable forms that hint at function or motion, yet suggest a frozen instance of time. The work relates to the body in various ways ranging from their personal history as a cradle for the body, to an abstraction that empathizes with absence, or the miracle of birth and death. The Proposed Brain Janitor is the keeper of these sentiments. It organizes these images and memories when appropriate, and makes mistakes all the same.