Contributing Artists

Connor Totten

Exhibition Statement as Preserved in the SUGS/SITE Archives:

“Just then, a cook clogged his throat. Skin and pubic hair smothered his face. It made him think of the pirate mask he used to wear every Halloween.” (Dennis Cooper, Closer, 1989)

 

Eating Glue emphasizes battling the desires of the self, seducing the self into the depths of fantasy and imagination. Escapism becomes a space to fantasize and dream; a mode of making love to yourself. Eating Glue is the universality of losing oneself through indulgence, perversion, romance, and companionship. The act of losing yourself through an attempt at being seen.

Eating Glue is a depiction of fatal curiosity. Eating Glue is indulgence, perversion, romance, addiction, the first encounter with misbehavior. Using imagination as rebellion, turning approval into disapproval, finding familiarity in the unfamiliar, walking through your house in the dark. Eating Glue is fearing the self, fearing what one is capable of, both internally and externally. Standing on a balcony and reminding yourself you could jump, or stripping yourself naked and running around the neighborhood. Eating Glue blurs the human spirit and behavior between the comfortable and uncomfortable.

The works in this exhibition emphasize a form of play and curiosity through material exploration and subversion of objects. Challenging traditional sculpting methods, Totten subverts recognizable objects by using tape as an adhesive, cellophane as a varnish, and stacking and reconstructing objects to alter their context. Through this sense of play, there is an emphasis on theatrical orchestration of figures and objects in space, in ways of forming relationships, further challenging the viewer’s perception of freedom. While one figure, a metal body crawling up the wall with free-flowing hair, may be seen as free, another may be restricted from their freedom, shoved inside a brick of concrete or pierced at the audience through a pet cage. This notion of freedom is meant to suddenly invert itself, bringing in deeper fascination with the unattainable. Only desiring what you can’t attain, therefore becoming bored with what you have.

In a society of complete exposure; being able to consume anything at any time, you can’t help but desire more and more. Desire under surveillance? We embrace selflessness yet find it so easy to act so selfishly.

Why must I feel embarrassed for wanting everything I’ve never had?