Various Working Methods

The core artistic problem of our time regards the overcoming of postmodernism. In postmodernism, all essences are expressed in surfaces, surfaces permuted as pastiche, ad infinitum. In postmodernism, all attempts at authenticity are immediately reduced to stylistic affect. The postmodern cultural landscape is a whirlpool from which nothing can emerge with its authenticity intact. All is churned into style, and no style prevails over any other.

Shake’s sculptures presented in Various Working Methods are constructed from the signature material of postmodernity: plastic. The sculptures can be cut, pasted, refashioned, bent, and recolored quite easily at any point in the process. Unlike stone, metal, or wood, thermal plastic’s forgiving flexibility grants Shake a great degree of creative freedom from start to finish. The challenge is limitation. Faced with a fluid material which could culminate in practically any form, and a cultural landscape which is seemingly ready to accept anything, Shake gives himself over to a relatively specific sculptural project.