MAN IN THE BOX • Series Thesis

Man in the Box is a series which explores suffering and the therapeutic expression of suffering. Living with an anxiety disorder as well as cyclical cadence of depression can feel like many things. In particular, it feels like living in a box. In the midst of a deep valley of these emotions, where one is geographically located becomes a box. The town becomes a box. The home becomes a box. And worst of all, the skull becomes a box.

Conceptually, I used the square-shaped structure of the canvas as it exists in its most natural, material state: a box. The canvas then functions not as an arbitrarily-shaped vehicle for expression, but the expression itself is predicated on the surface's material nature.

The square prisons are populated with abstracted figures that bend and bow according to the surface they find themselves in. Each space never seems large enough to allow the figure to stand in confidence and the figures themselves are stripped away of any identifying elements. What remains are anthropomorphic shapes, trapped in a box.

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