BIO:

J. La Ve’ (he/ they, Billings, Montana b. 2001) is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily with welded armatures, unorthodox fabric, and canvas stretching techniques. Graduating from Parsons with a BFA in Fine Arts (2027) and a BA from Eugene Lang in Urban Studies (2027), he is currently based in New York City, NY

STATEMENT:

The performance of the road being the stringent vitality of suburbanized America is which I attribute my methodologies from. Through experimenting with the relational, and the idea of an object covered in a shroud, I elucidate a practice parallel to Jeanne Claude and Christo’s methodologies as well as building on the force of twisting an otherwise intractable material, pertaining to the pedagogical approaches of John Chamberlin.

In documenting a visual representation of the mass obsessions of the modern motor vehicle, I express the parasocial relationships people have with cars, road anxiety, and the power of a vehicle becoming consuming. Materiality is based on distorting the form. I experiment with warped material as a through line towards a steel armature, in which nylon spandex are stretched, animating its third dimension and archiving movement in an unorthodox informational system.

The documentation of urban space inherently warps the perspectives that once were in the image, echoing memory to recreate the built environment. Postmodernism serves as a primer for my practice, inundating the viewer with the recontextualization of an object, inviting imagination and newness to the urban expanse. The explicit hardness of the machine is one that becomes the root of my work, queering the road and the vehicle, building my own collection. Within this, obsession that in its sculptural state, becomes a paradoxical “stand still” between the vehicle and the viewer. A softer material as a facade to a steel base becomes one that is fragile and feminine, reworking the myth that has taken over mechanized America as one of masculinity.

The anonymity of the perpetrator of these vehicles becomes characterized by the vehicle itself. The further introspection of America’s motorized highway systems becomes obscured with this deeper anonymity and highway aggression that doesn’t care if one lives or dies. As the motorways of the United States have become the veins of the country and the forefront of regional connectivity, the mass fetish of automobiles has influenced not only city design, but our individuality as well. The Interstate Highway System has always been a space of hostility, a display of masculinity, and one of anonymity between drivers. How does the mechanized anonymity, hostility, and vehicular anxiety manifest apathy between drivers, and how is the motorcycle mythologized as a totem of masculinity and the convergence of human and motor vehicle?

Email: jlaveart@gmail.com