The Logic of Nature

Dialogue between Objects
By Trent Thursby Alvey

Object oriented, (3-D) work is possibly my most satisfying. It is work that I can’t rush. I am the facilitator, the one who brings the pieces together to see if they are a match.  While I’m working on a 3-D piece, I am constantly looking for the components, without knowing where I will find them, what they are, or how many there will be. I trust in the intuitive to pick the right objects that will dialogue with one another.  I don’t know the dialogue until I bring the right pieces together.

I allow my assemblages to enjoy limitless probabilities while they are emerging. Probabilities increase and decrease as I add or subtract objects or change their positions, with every change comes a new dialogue. Because of my personal experience and sensibilities, I select certain combinations of objects. Early in the twentieth century, observing quantum systems challenged assumptions that the observer was separate, suggesting that the act of observation could alter the outcome of the experiment.

Complimentarity (the logic of nature), a principle described by physicist Niels Bohr, describes wave-particle dualism exploring new relationships between parts and wholes in physics and biology. Dichotomous objects or forces that compliment or oppose each other become something greater as a result of the union of the parts. No collection of parts, no matter how arbitrarily large will reveal or define the whole, but bringing just the right pieces together allows us a glimpse at a greater truth. Complimentary forces allow the collection of objects to reveal their common truth. This truth exists in our world-constructing minds. The resulting dialogue reveals not only academic concepts; form, texture, hue, value, composition, and utilitarian function, but also the greater, archetypal dialogue; light versus dark, weightlessness versus oppression, form versus idea. The ultimate-truth is simply that one object/idea does not exist without another to demonstrate its complimentary nature. Once complimentarity is realized the sculpture is free to exist, as a concept rather than a collection of objects.

Since assemblages can reveal themselves quickly or slowly over a few days or many years, I am able to pursue my 2-D work simultaneously. I love to investigate these archetypal questions through both mediums.  As for me, it is all about exploration and discovery.  I must remain open, for a preconceived outcome kills the creativity.  Of course, since there are limitless probabilities, I must begin to make choices. The process of choosing can be instantaneous or slow and methodical. 

My paintings are a continuation of these 3-D encounters.  For example, my installation exhibit at Phillips last November, Propensity for Repetition, was an exploration of a quote by Kiki Smith I’d read in an exhibit of Smith’s work five years earlier.  Repetition is Spiritual. That phrase was a direct hit. I carried it with me all the time until it finally manifested itself into the installation. I explored it from the evolutionary biology approach, as well as, the spiritual approach, finding out that our history is spiritual, that indeed it is as simple as; we are the summation of those simple repetitions. We are the breathing, the walking, the observing the sunrise, sun set, the seasons, the changing of the tides, the migration of the birds, the replication of all the species, and the living and the dying.  This repetition, however mundane it may appear at times is our spirituality, revealing there is no difference between what we do/witness and our spirituality. The sum of our actions and thoughts transcends our own bodies and minds and mingles with the greater consciousness.

Similarly, in my Tai Chi practice, the practitioner is the conduit between earth and sky.   All energy flows back and forth from sky to earth, from earth to sky, through the fragile bodies on earth. We are the links between the mundane world and the spiritual world.  My practice has become seeing the mundane as spiritual and the spiritual as the mundane. Thus eventually eliminating the dichotomy.

The assemblage I am presently working on is a meditation on the continuity of existence entitled, Circular Memory. On the floor, a massive coiled rope winds around an illuminated orb, only at the end does the rope divert from its circularity, the beginning of an unraveling. All my work whether installation, painting or assemblage, flows from one exhibit to another, in a long stream of consciousness dialogue. Continuity/repetition/spirituality.

My strongest influences are the artists Josepf Bueys, Eva Hesse and Mona Hatari, because of their unexpected use of materials; the Chinese experimental artists Wanda Gu and ZuBing with their work with hair as a medium; Chinese artist Zhang Huan, whose installation and performance work I saw in Sydney Australia and Japanese artist Kadanoga, whose work was exhibited right here at the Salt Lake Art Center. A few writers who have guided my thinking are David Bohm (On Creativity), Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos (The Non-local Universe), Gary Snyder (Practice of the Wild) and Jack Turner (Abstract Wild) and Jim Harrison’s poetry.