Thomas Deininger
I create work across a broad spectrum of mediums and employ different methods and techniques, from drawing and painting to video, sculpture, and installation. These various disciplines inform and often bleed into one another. I believe that an idea is manifested in whatever form is most appropriate for the specific concept to take shape and be communicated. Ultimately, It’s the idea that dictates the process.
Through my found object sculptural work, I explore a variety of concepts, but there are at least four or five recurring themes that are fairly consistent. They are, in no particular order or relevance, perspective and illusion in both a visual form (abstraction vs. representation) and a conceptual or metaphorical one (what we believe we understand from any given reference point versus what the complex reality may be from different vantages). I contemplate theories of order from chaos and vice/versa and human’s often futile attempts at classification and taxonomy in a messy world of entropy, disorder, and sublimity. My work also celebrates and condemns our consumer and disposable popular culture. I look to achieve this by subverting nostalgia and memory with common, everyday objects, familiar toys, and action figurines. The individual pieces serve as a Don Quixote-like action expressing my obvious disdain for mass consumerism and the associated environmental issues created by these unsustainable habits. I also question what we value as a culture and what we consider beautiful and meaningful vs. ugly and worthless. There is an absurdist quality as I try to create a paradox of prophetic and profane. I try to balance the tension between the spiritual and the irreverent…