Kelly Larsen

Artist Statement

Our bodies are inhabited by our surroundings while our bodies inhabit our land. There is no such thing as a closed system. By domesticating the land, we have separated ourselves from the natural ecological systems. Concrete and steel suffocate the soil and form conduit drainage systems. When it rains, the water mixes with bio-waste and the un-treated sewage is discharged into the rivers of the New York harbor making our urban landscape a hazardous depository. These are my materials.

My work can take on either a violent or restorative connotation. Albert Einstein said, “All our lauded technology, our very civilization, is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal”. The violence of the industrial age must move into a healing period.

Our environment is inside us as we breathe, drink and even hear; it has a physiological and mental affect on us. I like to see my work as personified bodies or systems that eat, sleep, breath and shit.

Through aesthetic attraction, I invite people into a discourse of urban development and its effects on natural resources. I collect discarded goods such as, charred architecture beams, steel, shredded office documents and plastic containers. Other material like plant seeds gives a sense of hope through phytoremediation. I use languages of painting, sculpture, photography, video and audio. They grow or perish or simply transform through their own system. The process is unavoidable.