Curtis Goldstein

Region: Midwest

By constructing imagery from pieces of packaging, advertising, and other discarded materials, my recent work mimics the manufactured environment’s physical and psychological omnipresence in a highly compressed form, while attesting to the reflexive nature of perception. It is impossible to entirely disentangle or separate seeing from memories of having seen. Our brains collect fragments of visual information, neurally mapped as countless mental representations, which are assembled to provide shape, contour, and meaning to our subsequent experiences. Through collage and bricolage, I evoke this artificiality of human perception to critique a reductive, anthropocentric vision of nature. The resulting works are hypnagogic materializations of the Anthropocene—the current epoch, defined by two interrelated developments: the growing impact of Homo sapiens on a global scale and the accelerated destruction of the earth’s ecosystems. The work resists the cultural homogenization brought about by increased social pressures and environmental degradation, gathering and amalgamating the disparate elements of our world.