Michelangelo Arteaga MRSS

My work is an enquiry into how spatial forms incorporate the human condition and social processes. I seek to fragment the boundaries of a sequence to express the Presence of an Absence.

My sculptures range from the diminutive (pocket sculptures) to the monumental (People as Places, Places as People). I use hard stones or translucent alabasters. I use polyester resin and fibreglass, wood, steel or bronze. The meaning is implicit but veiled.

Sometimes transparent or opaque materials give the opportunity to pass through the first border between ‘us; and ‘it’. It evokes the experience of being drawn into a relationship with an object. In the larger ones, the object threatens to engulf, to take you inside. Other times, it works as a cave, an abode or a big sea shell which protects you from the exterior.

Sometimes you have to descend into primaeval chaos to discover an order. They are some of the abstractions we make about the world, trying to understand it.

The balance between sensuous organic curves and their engineered construction explores the interface between interior and exterior, surface and edge, form and image, mass and solidity, volume and void, material and shadow. These opposing qualities touch on fundamental issues of presence and absence.