For the past ten years Jeff Colson has been working on
a series of sculptures, paintings and watercolors that focus on the ephemeral
quality of paper, as a subject and a material. Each work depicts a peripheral
accumulation of paper, once symbolic of the day-to-day frenzy of one’s life. As
a single sheet it is barely there, but when accumulated, it becomes physical
and symbolically loaded as information and the systematization of our daily
existence. Colson recognizes that in an attempt to control chaos we
are sometimes caught in a manic and desperate spiral to prevent the inevitable,
the absurdity of this “Catch-22” is evidenced by the accumulation of almost
everything that we desire, regardless of need. Ironically, now with the digital
age, paper is on the brink of extinction. This existential view has been the
underpinnings of most of his work, coupled with a desire to make objects from
memory with all its distortion—a personal validation of acquisition.
Using his own handcrafted techniques, the elements of the work
are carved, cut, sawn, sanded, painted, welded, and molded to replicate an
object that is recognized at once for its intent and as absurd as an art
object. Stacks (2014-2015) is an amalgam of three happenstance
load-bearing objects: desk, drop leaf table and a milk crate supporting an ever
increasing and ominous mountain of paper stacked like performance bar graphs.
These comically wobbly towers of paper, the residue of well-intentioned
ambitions seem touching in their sincerity, and the act of attempting
insurmountable odds, a universal experience.
Jeff Colson grew up near the oil fields just north of
Bakersfield, California. His father was a social worker whose
do-it-yourself aesthetic, making everything from toys to homemade life jackets,
informed Colson’s own identity as a “crackpot tinkerer.” In his sculpture,
Colson refers to both that quirky, by-the-seat-of-your-pants decision-making
process and Modernism’s purist grid. The sculptures are fabricated from
both personal and cultural memory, often without referencing specific objects
or images. The resulting forms are familiar, but aren’t real.
Colson’s sculptures are physical documents of remembered reality. The sense of
history is also literal as each piece can take months, even years to make.
Jeff Colson graduated from California State College,
Bakersfield. His work is in the Collection of Count Giuseppe Panza di
Buomo at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; the Sammlung Rosenkranz
Foundation in Wuppertal, Germany; the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at
Pepperdine University in Malibu, California; Colección Júmex, Mexico City and in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s
permanent collection.
Jeff Colson was awarded a 2012 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial
Foundation Fellowship and a 2015 City of Los Angeles (C.O.L.A.) Fellowship.
The
artist lives and works in Pasadena, California
