Project Brief: Golden Hands is a video-based artwork that combines sectional audio with accompanying imagery to provide an exploration of space as portraiture.
Artist Statement
Golden Hands is a conceptual artwork about the relationship between myself and my grandfather, Carl Brenner. Tied by lineage embedded in repair, the work explores the similarities and differences between an antique clock conservator and a young artist who can only translate the meticulous technicalities of her grandfather’s craft through the interpretive lens of adaptive reuse.
Golden Hands is created on the platform of suspended disbelief. The conceptual ‘visitor’ approaches the found-architecture of a large, concrete cylinder in an ambiguous setting. Inside the structure are three rooms each containing sectional audio that corresponds with three interventions into the concrete walls. The audio starts with the soft ticking of a clock that establishes a faint, dreamy cadence. to which the viewer enters each room in a steady rhythm.
Part I (Room 1)
The first room is a portrait of Carl Brenner. The audio is predominately that of my grandfather who shares his memories, expertise and knowledge. The room contains an intervention that focuses on repetition through small, gilded apertures and abstracted steel forms taken from the visual language of an antique clock mechanism.
Part II (Room 2)
The second room is a portrait of my relationship with my grandfather. My voice becomes increasingly more present in the audio than in Part I. The audio's focus shifts slightly to a more conversational tone between the two generations. The second intervention into the concrete cylinder presents two large cut-out forms, one slightly larger than the other, with small brass rods delicately supporting the concrete’s weight. Between the middle concrete forms are three brass windpipes. As the viewer moves through the room, the faint sound of wind from the exterior of the building is heard in correspondence to my grandfather’s breath.
Part III (Room 3)
The third room is a self-portrait. The audio shifts to focus on the act of listening, digesting and interpreting. Two planes break the concrete wall with small apertures that cast light and shadow, moving across the floor with the movement of the sun. Lights are suspended from the ceiling, falling through some of these apertures. I see this as a depiction of glimpses in which you can see my grandfather’s character within my own.
