In synthesis, I would describe my work as an oblique observation of physical and conditional experience, generated from a structured yet improvisational and reductive position. I have devised a vocabulary based on specific properties and conditions of water that has initiated a language formed in the refracted reflections of environment, both physical and conceptual.

One basic form, a water filled glass tank, is an optical device designed to gather visual data from the surrounding environment as well as attached photographs and other surfaces. The refracted and reflected information is then recombined, restructured, reconfigured and spit out as altered bits of organization, creating new patterns and possible meaning. The action in the tanks can be illustrative of the mind and its processing and interpretation of the human and natural experience.

Mathematics plays an important role here, to initiate a context of relationships and physical form, but in the end the structure falls away to reveal a sphere of visual complexity no longer attached to its origins. This evolution is based on the question, how is perception defined, from the mechanical aspects of our senses to the psychological interpretations of that information.

The process of mapping helps to illustrate the contextual and conceptual undertakings of my work. However, I have a broader definition for the map. I use the term ‘liquid map’ instead, to refer to both the transmutation and expansion of the traditional map and to the particular focus of my art. I work to understand a context within seemingly disparate experiences, types of actions or states of being, which are found within the umbrella of the structural, the psychological and the mystical. The map is a guide and outline where ideas are parallel, both for comparison and verification, but the map must not be confused with the direct experience.

The mapping charts ritual, context, water technology, physics, surface, reflection, environment, duration, experience, activity, suspended time, containment, refraction, history, function, myth, memory, action, dissolution, erosion, cycles, processes, space.

The motivating factors inherent in the practice of architecture are instructive in generating models and systems for my work as a visual artist. An intrinsic focus of my work is structure and its strength in communicating complex ideas in a cohesive, vital manner. This has manifested itself in drawings, models, sculptures and room size works: spaces that attempt to generate real experience through action, as opposed to allegory and metaphor; experiences that evoke and provoke permutations of introspection, fear, compassion, joy, truth, beauty and other characteristics of the human condition; experiences that stimulate my intrigue with matters of structure, science and analysis.

On a final note, what the idea of alchemy represents, and its conversation between empirical structure or science and the world of the metaphysical, embody my most personal endeavors as an artist and being. I am intrigued by the quantifiable and mechanical, yet mystery, spirit and the unknown is what provides a real source for why I pursue a creative production at all. “The ultimate object of the alchemist is to transform himself into the philosopher’s stone…the adept is simultaneously the crucible and the stone… the lead and the gold.”

My fundamental trajectory as an artist has been to actuate a methodology that allows me to investigate the nature of being within the shroud of structure, while transcending action and definition altogether.

David Teeple